Principal Security Engineer

Chewy Chewy · Retail · Plantation, FL +1

Principal Cybersecurity Engineer role focused on designing, building, and evolving security capabilities for large-scale, cloud-native systems (AWS, EKS). Requires hands-on technical leadership, deep system-level thinking, and influencing security outcomes across multiple teams. Responsibilities include owning core security engineering capabilities, developing threat models, embedding security into design and code, and mentoring engineers.

What you'd actually do

  1. Design, review, and contribute to security architectures and implementations across cloud, application, data, and platform layers
  2. Own and evolve core security engineering capabilities (e.g., cloud security patterns, workload identity, network segmentation, secrets management, data protection) from design through production
  3. Develop and maintain threat models, security requirements, and architectural guardrails for distributed systems running on public clouds.
  4. Partner directly with engineering teams to embed security into system design and code, not as an after-the-fact review function
  5. Define and implement secure-by-default patterns that teams can adopt without centralized friction

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in computer science or engineering
  • 15+ years of engineering experience
  • Substantial hands-on work in cybersecurity engineering and architecture
  • Deep, practical expertise in securing AWS environments, including IAM, networking, compute, and managed data services
  • Strong hands-on experience with Kubernetes/EKS security, including pod/workload identity, network policies, and runtime controls
  • Proven experience securing distributed data systems, including DynamoDB and PostgreSQL-based platforms
  • Ability to read, review, and meaningfully influence production code and infrastructure-as-code
  • Experience turning ambiguous risk and business requirements into concrete technical designs and implementations
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills

Nice to have

  • Prior experience securing high-scale e-commerce or consumer-facing platforms
  • Experience building self-service security platforms or guardrails used by multiple engineering teams
  • Strong infrastructure-as-code background (e.g., Terraform) with security-first design
  • Experience integrating security into CI/CD pipelines and developer workflows
  • History of leading or significantly contributing to post-incident architectural improvements

What the JD emphasized

  • hands-on work in cybersecurity engineering and architecture
  • Demonstrated experience building and operating security controls in production, not just designing or recommending them
  • Track record of owning security outcomes across multiple teams through influence rather than direct authority