Senior Security Engineer - Platform Security

Senior Security Engineer - Platform Security
What You'll Do
As a Senior Security Engineer on the Platform Security team, reporting to the Senior Manager of Platform Security, you will play a critical role in securing Avalara's rapidly expanding global SaaS platform. At Avalara, we are building scalable security capabilities that are embedded directly into how software and infrastructure are built and operated. You'll help us accelerate engineering velocity by implementing secure-by-default guardrails and automating security controls across our cloud environments.
Avalara is an exciting place to build your career because we are at the forefront of digital transformation and AI innovation. In this role, you will help advance our AI-first strategy by identifying opportunities to responsibly leverage AI to improve risk reduction, platform protection, and engineering effectiveness.
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What Your Responsibilities Will Be
- Engineer and deliver secure-by-default platform components and shared security services, including authentication, secrets management, encryption, and access control.
- Drive adoption of zero-trust principles, least-privilege access models, and scalable security guardrails across infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and runtime environments.
- Identify and implement AI-enabled approaches that improve security operations, detection, analysis, remediation, and engineering productivity.
- Lead complex, cross-functional security initiatives with clear milestones and measurable risk reduction outcomes.
- Provide technical guidance to engineering teams on threat modeling, secure design practices, and lifecycle security controls.
- Improve platform-wide security posture through enhanced observability, threat detection, and security automation.
- Raise engineering and security standards through technical leadership, mentorship, and collaboration.
What You’ll Need To Be Successful
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical discipline.
- 8+ years of relevant professional experience, including at least 4 years focused on cloud, infrastructure, or platform security.
- Strong programming experience in one or more of Java, Go, Python, or .NET.
- Expertise in cloud platform security across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or OCI environments.
- Experience securing containerized and cloud-native environments, including Kubernetes and related technologies.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code, cloud security posture management, and security automation.
- Strong understanding of identity and access management, network security, vulnerability management, encryption, and runtime security principles.
- Familiarity with AI-enabled security tooling and emerging AI security practices (Preferred).
- Security certifications such as CISSP, CCSP, GCSA, or equivalent (Preferred).
Avalara is an AI-first Company
AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products. Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.
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You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.
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You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.
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You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.
How We’ll Take Care Of You
Total Rewards
In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.
Health & Wellness 
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance. 
Inclusive culture and diversity 
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship. 
What You Need To Know About Avalara
We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.
We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.
We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.
We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer
Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.
Required Skills
Required Languages
🇬🇧 English