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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cybersecurity Architect

💰 $ - $

SecurityCybersecurityArchitectureCloudIT

🎯 Role Definition

As a Cybersecurity Architect you will own the end-to-end security architecture for enterprise systems, cloud platforms, and applications. You will design, document, and enforce secure-by-design patterns and controls, lead threat modeling and risk assessments, and partner with engineering, cloud, and product teams to embed security into development lifecycles. The role combines deep technical expertise in cloud security, network security, identity and access management (IAM), and application security with strong governance, compliance, and stakeholder leadership skills. Ideal candidates are experienced security architects who can translate business requirements into scalable security controls, articulate security trade-offs to executives, and drive measurable risk reduction.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Security Engineer
  • Cloud Security Engineer
  • Application Security Engineer

Advancement To:

  • Director of Security Architecture
  • Chief Security Architect / Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
  • VP of Security Engineering

Lateral Moves:

  • Cloud Security Architect
  • Identity & Access Management (IAM) Architect
  • Security Product Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design and maintain enterprise security architecture frameworks and blueprints that align with business strategy and regulatory requirements, ensuring consistent implementation across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).
  • Lead threat modeling workshops with product, engineering, and operations teams to identify attack surfaces, enumerate threat scenarios, prioritize security controls, and produce actionable mitigation plans tied to business risk.
  • Architect and validate secure network topologies, segmentation strategies, VPN/SD-WAN configurations, and perimeter controls to minimize blast radius and meet performance and availability objectives.
  • Define and enforce Identity and Access Management (IAM) architectures, including role-based access control (RBAC), least privilege models, privileged access management (PAM), single sign-on (SSO), and integration with SAML/OAuth/OpenID Connect providers.
  • Develop and implement cloud security patterns and guardrails (Infrastructure as Code scanning, secure templates, cloud-native controls) to standardize secure provisioning and hardening of cloud resources.
  • Lead security architecture reviews for new projects, platform migrations, and third-party integrations; provide security design recommendations, threat mitigations, and acceptance criteria for deployment.
  • Create and maintain security control baselines, reference architectures, and design patterns to accelerate secure development and operational practices across engineering teams.
  • Collaborate with DevOps and engineering to integrate security into CI/CD pipelines (SAST, DAST, container scanning, IaC scanning) and promote DevSecOps automation for continuous security validation.
  • Specify and validate cryptographic requirements, key management strategies, TLS/PKI architectures, and secure storage of secrets using centralized secret management solutions (e.g., HashiCorp Vault, cloud KMS).
  • Conduct architecture-level risk assessments and produce security risk registers, residual risk statements, and prioritized remediation roadmaps for executive and risk committees.
  • Drive security requirements and controls for APIs and microservices, including authentication, authorization, input validation, rate limiting, and secure data flows to prevent common API threats.
  • Design secure logging, monitoring, and detection architectures that feed SIEM, EDR, XDR, and SOAR tools to ensure early detection and automated response to security incidents.
  • Define resilient incident response and forensic readiness architectures that support rapid containment, root cause analysis, and regulatory reporting while preserving evidence integrity.
  • Evaluate, pilot, and recommend security tooling and platforms (CASB, CSPM, CWPP, WAF, IAM/PAM, DLP) based on technical fit, scalability, and operational cost; lead vendor assessments and proof-of-concepts.
  • Translate regulatory and compliance requirements (NIST CSF, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR) into technical architecture controls and attest to compliance posture through architecture documentation.
  • Architect data protection and privacy controls including encryption at rest/in transit, tokenization, data loss prevention (DLP), sensitive data discovery, and masking strategies aligned with business needs.
  • Create and maintain threat and vulnerability management strategies tied to architecture, including prioritized remediation of critical findings, patching strategies, and risk-based exception handling.
  • Mentor engineering teams on secure design principles, secure coding patterns, and security testing best practices; run brown-bag sessions and onboarding for new teams adopting secure architectures.
  • Produce clear, executive-level architecture documentation, diagrams, and security trade-off analyses to inform stakeholders, audits, and board-level reporting.
  • Collaborate with procurement and legal to ensure third-party and supply chain security requirements are embedded into contracts, SLAs, and vendor onboarding processes.
  • Participate in merger & acquisition (M&A) due diligence to assess target security architecture, identify integration risks, and define remediation/architecture harmonization plans.
  • Design and operate secure container and orchestration architectures (Kubernetes, container hardening, network policies) with runtime protection and image provenance controls.

Secondary Functions

  • Support periodic security architecture health reviews, security posture reporting, and continuous improvement initiatives to close architecture gaps and optimize controls.
  • Assist in producing content for security awareness programs and deliver architecture-level briefings to technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Develop architecture validation checklists and automate evidence collection to accelerate audit and compliance cycles.
  • Advise on secure migration strategies for legacy systems to cloud-native architectures, including decomposition, sandboxing, and mitigating transitional risks.
  • Provide on-call architecture support during major incidents to advise containment options, workarounds, and long-term architecture fixes.
  • Contribute architectural requirements to RFPs, procurements, and vendor selection processes to ensure evaluated solutions meet strategic security objectives.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Security Architecture Design: enterprise and cloud-native security architecture, secure reference architectures, and architecture governance.
  • Cloud Security: deep experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP security services (IAM, VPC, KMS, Security Hub, CloudTrail) and multi-cloud architecture patterns.
  • Identity & Access Management (IAM): SSO/SAML/OIDC, RBAC/PBAC, PAM, and federated identity architectures.
  • Network & Perimeter Security: segmentation, micro-segmentation, VPN/SD-WAN, firewalls, IDS/IPS, and zero trust networking.
  • Application & API Security: threat modeling, secure SDLC, SAST/DAST, OWASP Top 10 mitigation, API security gateways.
  • DevSecOps & Automation: CI/CD pipeline integration, IaC scanning (Terraform, CloudFormation), container security, and security-as-code patterns.
  • Cryptography & Key Management: TLS, PKI, KMS design, key rotation, HSMs, and secure storage of secrets.
  • Security Operations & Detection: SIEM, EDR/XDR, SOAR, logging architecture, and detection engineering.
  • Compliance & Risk Management: translating NIST, ISO, PCI, GDPR, HIPAA into architecture controls and conducting risk assessments.
  • Vulnerability & Patch Management: architecture-level vulnerability remediation planning and prioritization.
  • Secure Infrastructure Technologies: container orchestration (Kubernetes), virtualization, and serverless platform security.
  • Scripting & Tooling: Python, Bash, PowerShell, or other scripting languages for automation and PoC development.
  • Architectural Modeling & Diagramming: UML/C4 or other visual frameworks to communicate complex security architectures.
  • Vendor & Product Evaluation: assessing security products (CASB, CSPM, WAF, DLP) and running technical POCs.

Soft Skills

  • Strategic thinking: translate business objectives into pragmatic security architecture and measurable outcomes.
  • Communication: present technical concepts clearly to executives, engineers, auditors, and stakeholders; produce concise architecture documentation.
  • Leadership & Influence: lead cross-functional teams and drive security decisions without direct authority.
  • Collaboration: partner effectively with engineering, product, legal, and compliance teams to build secure solutions.
  • Problem solving: diagnose complex system interactions and design resilient, scalable security controls.
  • Prioritization: balance risk, cost, and time to recommend pragmatic remediation and phased architecture changes.
  • Mentoring: coach engineers on secure design, secure coding practices, and architecture principles.
  • Stakeholder management: negotiate trade-offs and align product timelines with security constraints.
  • Attention to detail: ensure designs account for edge cases, failure modes, and composability of controls.
  • Continuous learning: keep pace with evolving threats, cloud features, and security best practices.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

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

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Cybersecurity, Information Systems, Computer Science, or MBA with security focus; or equivalent professional certifications (CISSP, SABSA, TOGAF, CISM).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science / Software Engineering
  • Information Security / Cybersecurity
  • Computer Engineering / Network Engineering
  • Information Systems / Risk Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 7+ years in cybersecurity roles with at least 3–5 years focused on security architecture, cloud security, or enterprise security design.

Preferred:

  • 10+ years of hands-on experience in security engineering and architecture, demonstrated leadership of cross-functional security initiatives, and proven track record designing secure enterprise or cloud-native platforms. Relevant certifications such as CISSP, SABSA, CCSP, CISM, or vendor certifications (AWS Certified Security – Specialty, Azure Security Engineer) are strongly preferred.
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