Torchora
Back to Home

Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Application Security Engineer

💰 $110,000 - $170,000

SecurityInformation TechnologyDevSecOpsEngineering

🎯 Role Definition

As an Application Security Engineer you will be the subject matter expert for application and API security across our product portfolio. You will lead hands-on security testing, threat modeling, and vulnerability management while embedding security controls into development workflows. You will partner with product, engineering, QA, and cloud teams to shift security left and continuously reduce application risk using automation, metrics, and developer enablement.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Software Engineer with security focus
  • DevOps/DevSecOps Engineer transitioning to AppSec
  • Security Analyst or Penetration Tester with application focus

Advancement To:

  • Senior Application Security Engineer
  • Application Security Lead / Principal AppSec Engineer
  • Security Architect or Head of AppSec
  • Director/VP of Application Security or Chief Security Officer (CSO)

Lateral Moves:

  • Cloud Security Engineer
  • Secure Software Engineer / Developer Advocate (Security)
  • Product Security Engineer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead and execute application security assessments including static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), interactive application security testing (IAST), and software composition analysis (SCA) to identify, triage, and track remediation of vulnerabilities across web, mobile, API, and backend services.
  • Design, maintain, and scale an automated AppSec testing pipeline integrated with CI/CD (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI) to ensure security checks run early and often during the build and deployment lifecycle.
  • Conduct and facilitate threat modeling sessions for new features, major architecture changes, and critical integrations, producing actionable mitigations, security requirements, and risk assessments that align with product timelines.
  • Create and maintain secure coding standards, checklists, and secure design patterns for engineering teams; provide concrete remediation guidance and code examples to accelerate developer remediation.
  • Perform hands-on penetration testing and manual code review for high-risk applications, APIs, and third-party integrations to uncover complex business logic flaws, authentication/authorization weaknesses, and sensitive data exposures.
  • Operationalize vulnerability management for application-layer findings: define SLAs, categorize severity, assign ownership, track remediation progress, and report metrics to engineering and security leadership.
  • Lead software supply chain security initiatives (SCA, SBOM creation, dependency management, private mirrors) to reduce risk from vulnerable or malicious third-party libraries and packages.
  • Implement runtime application security controls and observability (RASP, WAF tuning, runtime detection) and partner with SRE/Platform teams to instrument telemetry and incident response workflows for application attacks.
  • Integrate security gates and policy-as-code (OPA/Rego, Terraform Sentinel) into IaC and deployment workflows, enforcing security guardrails for infrastructure and application configurations.
  • Build and maintain threat detection use cases for application-specific telemetry (authentication anomalies, API abuse, injection attempts) and collaborate with SOC/IR teams to operationalize response playbooks.
  • Drive developer enablement programs: deliver security training, office hours, workshops, secure code clinics, and recorded micro-lessons tailored to the organization’s tech stack and common vulnerabilities (OWASP Top 10, API Top 10).
  • Establish and report application security KPIs and metrics (time-to-remediate, vulnerability open rates, percentage of code scanned, mean time to detect) to drive continuous improvement and demonstrate ROI of AppSec investments.
  • Evaluate, pilot, and deploy AppSec tooling (SAST, DAST, SCA, secrets detection, container scanning, API security testing) including vendor selection, PoC management, and integration planning that balances developer experience and security coverage.
  • Collaborate with product managers and engineering leaders to define security requirements and acceptance criteria for new features, ensuring alignment with business risk and compliance obligations (PCI, HIPAA, SOC2).
  • Define secure authentication and authorization patterns for distributed systems (OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT handling, mTLS) and perform architecture reviews to validate identity and session management controls.
  • Conduct privacy and data protection reviews for application flows that consume, store, or transmit sensitive personal data; advise on data minimization, encryption-at-rest/in-transit, and tokenization strategies.
  • Assist incident response during application security incidents: perform root cause analysis of exploited vulnerabilities, support patch and mitigation rollouts, and help produce post-incident remediation plans and communication.
  • Perform security reviews of external integrations, third-party SaaS, and partner APIs including risk scoring, contractual security requirements, and compensating controls when direct remediation is not possible.
  • Lead secure-by-design initiatives for containerized and serverless applications, including image hardening, supply chain attestations, runtime isolation, and least-privilege IAM policies for cloud-native services.
  • mentor and grow AppSec capability across the organization by creating playbooks, automating repetitive tasks (triage, labeling, remediation templates), and promoting security champions within engineering squads.
  • Maintain knowledge of evolving threat landscape and application attack techniques, contribute to internal threat intelligence, and ensure AppSec program adapts to new classes of vulnerabilities (e.g., dependency confusion, supply chain attacks).
  • Participate actively in architecture and code reviews to identify design-level security risks early and to influence secure design decisions with measurable trade-offs and alternatives.
  • Manage vulnerability disclosure programs and coordinate with external researchers, bug bounty platforms, and legal/compliance teams to validate and remediate reported issues.
  • Drive cross-functional initiatives to remediate systemic weaknesses (insecure defaults, shared libraries, CI misconfigurations) that cause recurring vulnerabilities across multiple products.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Application security testing: SAST, DAST, IAST—hands-on experience configuring, tuning, and analyzing results from commercial and open-source scanners.
  • Software composition analysis (SCA) and dependency management: experience with tools like Snyk, Dependabot, WhiteSource, Nexus IQ; ability to create SBOMs and remediate vulnerable libraries.
  • Secure SDLC and DevSecOps: experience embedding security into CI/CD pipelines, automating gating, and implementing shift-left strategies.
  • Penetration testing and manual code review skills: ability to perform authenticated testing, API fuzzing, session/authorization abuse testing, and code-level vulnerability identification.
  • Threat modeling and risk assessment methodologies (STRIDE, PASTA, LINDDUN) to produce practical mitigations and security requirements.
  • Cloud-native security expertise: securing AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure applications; IAM, secrets management, serverless and containerized workloads.
  • Identity and access control: OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWTs, RBAC/ABAC implementations, and secure session management patterns.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) security: scanning and securing Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM templates using policy-as-code (OPA, Checkov, tfsec).
  • Container and orchestration security: Docker image hardening, container scanning, Kubernetes security best practices, RBAC, network policies, and cluster hardening.
  • Scripting and automation: Python, Go, Ruby, Bash, or similar to build custom security tools, triage scripts, and CI/CD integrations.
  • Runtime application protection and observability: RASP/WAF tuning, distributed tracing, application logs, and telemetry for security incident detection.
  • API security and schema validation: OpenAPI/Swagger security review, rate-limiting, input validation, and anti-automation controls.
  • Secrets detection and management: ability to detect accidental secret leakage and integrate secret scanning tools with vaults and workflow controls.
  • Familiarity with compliance controls relevant to applications: PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR and ability to map technical controls to compliance requirements.
  • Experience with vulnerability management platforms and ticketing integration (Jira, ServiceNow) to automate assignments and remediation workflows.

Soft Skills

  • Excellent communicator capable of translating technical risks into business terms for product and executive stakeholders.
  • Strong collaborator who can build trust with engineering teams and influence without formal authority.
  • Analytical mindset with attention to detail and the ability to prioritize risk-based remediation efforts.
  • Proactive, self-starter who can design and implement end-to-end programs with minimal direction.
  • Coaching and mentoring capability to grow developer security skills and internal AppSec champions across teams.
  • Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid change in a fast-paced engineering environment.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Security, or related technical field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, or Information Systems or equivalent professional experience.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Cybersecurity / Information Security
  • Computer Engineering
  • Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–7 years of hands-on experience in application security, secure engineering, or related software security roles.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years of progressive application security experience, including real-world penetration testing, secure SDLC implementation, cloud-native security, and automation of AppSec tooling.
  • Experience working in agile product teams and integrating security practices into fast-paced CI/CD environments.
  • Relevant certifications (helpful but not required): CISSP, CSSLP, OSCP, GSSP, CCSP, or vendor certifications from cloud providers and AppSec tooling vendors.
Explore More Careers