Principal Application Security Engineer (contract)

Title : Principal Application Security Engineer

Location : Charlotte, NC

Duration : 12 months

Work Engagement : W2

Work Schedule: Hybrid 3 days in office/2 days remote

Benefits on offer for this contract position: Health Insurance, Life insurance, 401K and Voluntary Benefits

Summary

In this contingent resource assignment, you may: Consult as an expert to develop or influence initiatives and resources for highly complex business and technical needs across Engineering. Consult on the strategy and resolution of highly complex and unique challenges requiring in-depth evaluation across multiple areas, delivering solutions that are long-term, large-scale and require vision, creativity, innovation, and advanced analytical and inductive thinking. Provide expertise to client senior leadership on innovative Engineering business solutions. Strategically engage with client personnel. Required Qualifications: Engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work or consulting experience, training, military experience, education

Key Requirements

• Applicants must be authorized to work for ANY employer in the U.S. This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship.

• Demonstrated deep, hands-on expertise in:

  Secure application architecture and design

  Secure coding practices and code-level vulnerability analysis

  Threat modeling and abuse case analysis

• Authentication, authorization, session management, API security, and secrets management

• Common application vulnerabilities and exploit patterns (e.g., OWASP Top 10, deserialization, injection, SSRF, access control issues, insecure design, dependency risk)

• Strong hands-on experience securing applications built in one or more modern technology stacks such as Java, .NET, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Node.js, Go, or similar.

• Experience integrating security into CI/CD pipelines, developer workflows, and engineering platforms.

• Experience with one or more of the following: SAST, SCA, DAST, IaC scanning, container security, API security testing, code review, threat modeling, runtime protection, or software supply chain security controls.

• Hands-on experience with AI security, including securing AI-enabled applications or advising engineering teams on the secure use of AI/LLM-based capabilities.

• Ability to independently investigate complex technical problems, identify root causes, and drive practical remediation.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence both engineers and senior stakeholders.

• Proven ability to operate both strategically and tactically—moving from enterprise patterns to code-level detail as needed.

• Prior experience serving as an Application Security Champion, Security Champion, embedded security lead, or senior engineer responsible for driving security within product/application teams.

• Experience designing security controls for cloud-native and distributed systems running in Azure, AWS, or GCP.

• Experience with software supply chain security, including dependency risk management, build pipeline hardening, SBOM, artifact integrity, provenance, and package governance.

• Experience with runtime application protection, threat detection, or exploit prevention technologies.

• Familiarity with Zero Trust, secure platform engineering, and policy-as-code approaches.

• Experience defining standards, playbooks, or secure reference architectures that can be adopted broadly by engineering organizations.

• Background in software engineering or architecture prior to moving into security.

• Certifications: CSSLP, GIAC GWEB, CISSP, GIAC GWAPT, CCSP, CCSP