Application Security Engineer

Role & responsibilities

We are seeking a seasoned Application Security Subject Matter Expert (SME) with 7**+ years of experience** across multiple facets of application security including SAST, DAST, DevSecOps integration, and threat modeling. The SME will provide leadership in manual security testing, vulnerability validation, secure design reviews, and mentoring, while ensuring testing quality, SLA adherence, and alignment with business risk priorities.

Key Responsibilities

Threat Modeling & Advanced Testing

• Lead threat modeling workshops for critical applications and services.
• Perform manual security testing to assess business logic, abuse cases, and advanced attack scenarios.
• Validate and exploit high-risk findings from DAST tools such as Fortify WebInspect to confirm impact and reduce false positives.

Vulnerability Triage & Remediation

• Provide second-level triage of critical and high-severity vulnerabilities identified across SAST and DAST.
• Conduct in-depth discussions with application stakeholders to review critical findings, false positives, and exception requests.
• Guide application teams in remediation planning, secure design alternatives, and architecture-level mitigations.

DAST & SAST Governance

• Conduct DAST tool coverage reviews and evaluate feature utilization to maximize effectiveness.
• Ensure SAST and DAST testing, reporting, and remediation SLAs are consistently met.
• Track security metrics (coverage, SLA compliance, MTTR) and present insights to AppSec leadership.

Collaboration & Mentorship

• Collaborate with development, DevOps, and product teams to embed AppSec controls in CI/CD pipelines.
• Mentor and guide junior analysts (L1/L2) in vulnerability triage, secure coding, and manual testing techniques.
• Contribute to security automation opportunities, improving efficiency of AppSec processes and tooling.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Act as a trusted advisor and escalation point for application security issues.
• Lead second-level report discussions with business and technical stakeholders for critical vulnerabilities.
• Support secure design and architecture discussions for new initiatives and high-risk projects.

Tools & Technologies

• SAST: Fortify SCA, Checkmarx, SonarQube, Veracode
• DAST: Fortify WebInspect, Burp Suite Pro, OWASP ZAP, AppScan, Netsparker
• Threat Modeling: Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool, OWASP Threat Dragon, custom frameworks
• DevSecOps: Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps integration for security scanning
• Supporting Tools: Postman, Charles Proxy, MobSF (mobile), Splunk/Power BI for reporting

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field.
• 7+ years of experience in Application Security spanning SAST, DAST, manual testing, and secure SDLC.
• Proven experience in threat modeling, risk assessments, and secure design reviews.
• Strong knowledge of OWASP Top 10, API Security Top 10, SANS Top 25, CWE, and emerging threat vectors.
• Hands-on expertise in integrating security tools within DevSecOps pipelines.
• Excellent stakeholder communication and leadership skills.

Certifications (Preferred)

• OSWE / OSCP / OSEP (advanced exploit and web testing)
• CISSP / CSSLP (for security leadership & secure SDLC expertise)
• GWAPT / GWEB (web application security)
• Cloud security certs (CCSP, AWS Security Specialty, Azure SC-100) must have one cloud security certification