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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Security Engineer

💰 $ - $

SecurityWeb SecurityEngineeringDevSecOpsApplication Security

🎯 Role Definition

We are seeking an experienced Web Security Engineer to lead the security posture of our web and API surfaces. The ideal candidate combines hands-on application security testing and remediation guidance with automation expertise to embed security into SDLC and CI/CD pipelines. This role works closely with engineering, product, cloud ops, and incident response teams to detect, prevent and remediate web-layer threats, drive secure-by-design initiatives, and scale vulnerability management across modern web architectures (microservices, serverless, containers, GraphQL/REST APIs).

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Application Security Engineer
  • Security Analyst with web/application testing focus
  • Software Engineer with security responsibilities

Advancement To:

  • Senior Web Security Engineer / Lead Application Security Engineer
  • Principal Security Engineer / Security Architect (Web & Cloud)
  • Director of Application Security / Head of Security Engineering

Lateral Moves:

  • Cloud Security Engineer
  • DevSecOps Engineer
  • Incident Response / Threat Hunting Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  1. Conduct comprehensive web application security assessments — including manual penetration testing, authenticated and unauthenticated scans, and business-logic reviews — to identify critical vulnerabilities across web apps, APIs (REST/GraphQL), single-page applications, and server-side components.
  2. Lead threat modeling workshops with product and engineering teams to identify high-risk attack surfaces, design secure mitigations, document threat models, and recommend secure architectural changes during feature planning and design phases.
  3. Design, implement, and operate SAST, DAST, and interactive application security testing (IAST) toolchains integrated into CI/CD pipelines to provide fast, actionable vulnerability feedback to developers and reduce time-to-remediation.
  4. Build and operationalize automated vulnerability triage and prioritization workflows that correlate scan results, exploitability, and business criticality (CVE/CWE mapping, risk scoring) to focus engineering remediation efforts.
  5. Develop and maintain secure coding standards, security design patterns, and in-house libraries/guides that align with OWASP Top 10, CWE, and industry best practices for web and API security.
  6. Partner with platform and cloud teams to secure containerized applications and serverless functions, including hardening Kubernetes clusters, pod security policies, image scanning, runtime protections, and supply chain security controls.
  7. Configure, tune, and manage web application firewalls (WAF), API gateways, and edge security controls to block and mitigate common web threats (XSS, SQLi, CSRF, SSRF, parameter pollution, bot abuse) while minimizing false positives and business impact.
  8. Perform targeted exploit verification and proof-of-concept development for high-severity findings, producing reproducible test cases, remediation guidance, and regression tests for QA and CI.
  9. Lead incident investigations for web-layer breaches and exploitation attempts; perform forensic analysis of logs, traces, and application artifacts; coordinate containment and remediation with incident response and engineering teams.
  10. Drive vulnerability disclosure and bug bounty program triage and response: validate reports, prioritize fixes, communicate with security researchers, and integrate learnings into security controls and development guidance.
  11. Author clear, developer-friendly remediation tickets, code snippets, and pull request reviews to accelerate fixes, and work with product owners to track risk acceptance and resolution timelines.
  12. Create and deliver security training, secure coding workshops, and tabletop exercises for engineering, product, and QA teams to improve organization-wide security hygiene and reduce recurring vulnerabilities.
  13. Maintain an inventory of application assets, third-party components, and open-source dependencies; run and interpret SBOMs, dependency scans, and software composition analysis (SCA) to manage supply chain risks.
  14. Integrate runtime detection and observability into web apps (application logs, distributed tracing, WAF logs, SIEM ingestion) to detect anomalous behavior, credential stuffing, API abuse, and other web-based attacks.
  15. Establish KPIs and metrics for application security (time-to-remediation, reduction in critical vulnerabilities, scan coverage, false positive rates) and report progress to engineering leadership and stakeholders.
  16. Collaborate with authentication and identity teams to secure SSO, OAuth, OIDC flows, session management, cookie security, MFA enforcement, and token handling to mitigate session fixation and token abuse.
  17. Evaluate and recommend security tools, platforms, and managed services (DAST/SAST providers, WAF solutions, API security gateways, runtime protection) to scale web security operations cost-effectively.
  18. Lead secure design reviews for new features and third-party integrations, assessing data flows, sensitive data handling, encryption requirements (TLS, at-rest encryption), and compliance implications for web-facing systems.
  19. Participate in on-call rotations for security escalations, provide expert troubleshooting during outages or compromise events, and proactively identify systemic fixes to eliminate recurring web vulnerabilities.
  20. Continuously monitor threat intelligence sources for emerging web and API attack patterns (e.g., SSRF, deserialization flaws, dependency takeovers) and translate them into actionable prevention and detection controls.
  21. Collaborate with legal, privacy, and compliance teams to support audit activities, provide evidence for control effectiveness, and ensure web applications meet regulatory requirements (PCI-DSS, GDPR, SOC2 where relevant).
  22. Mentor junior security engineers and developers on secure development lifecycle practices and contribute to hiring and onboarding to grow application security capability.

Secondary Functions

  • Maintain and improve documentation for security runbooks, remediation playbooks, and developer-facing security knowledge base articles.
  • Support cross-functional initiatives to reduce mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) and mean-time-to-resolve (MTTR) for web-layer incidents.
  • Conduct periodic red team / purple team exercises focused on web and API attack scenarios to validate detection and response capabilities.
  • Assist product teams with privacy-by-design and data minimization reviews related to user-facing web features.
  • Contribute to organizational threat modeling and risk registers as web services and APIs evolve.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Proven experience performing manual web application penetration testing and exploitation techniques (XSS, SQLi, CSRF, SSRF, RCE, auth flaws) across modern web stacks.
  • Deep familiarity with OWASP Top 10, CWE taxonomy, CVE lifecycle, and secure coding best practices for JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, Ruby, Go, or similar web languages.
  • Hands-on with SAST (static analysis), DAST (dynamic analysis), SCA (software composition analysis), and IAST tools and ability to tune, interpret, and action results.
  • Experience integrating security testing and gates into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI) and automating remediation workflows via APIs.
  • Strong knowledge of API security (REST, GraphQL), authentication & authorization protocols (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML), JWT security, and session management protections.
  • Practical experience with WAFs and API gateways (ModSecurity, AWS WAF, Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly, Kong) including rule tuning, false positive reduction, and custom signatures.
  • Container and orchestration security skills (Docker, Kubernetes hardening, image signing, runtime controls, admission controllers, CIS benchmarks).
  • Cloud platform security experience (AWS, Azure, GCP) including securing load balancers, TLS termination, IAM, and cloud-native security services.
  • Familiarity with runtime application self-protection (RASP), EDR for cloud workloads, SIEM/Log management (Splunk, ELK, Datadog), and security orchestration tools.
  • Ability to create proof-of-concept exploits in controlled environments and produce reproducible test artifacts and remediation PRs.
  • Experience with automated dependency scanning and managing vulnerabilities in open-source (OSS) components and third-party libraries.
  • Knowledge of encryption, key management, TLS best practices, and secure transport configurations for web applications.
  • Experience with API rate-limiting, bot detection, credential-stuffing mitigation, and DDoS readiness at the web layer.
  • Familiarity with compliance frameworks relevant to web apps (PCI-DSS for e-commerce, SOC2, ISO27001, GDPR privacy considerations).

Soft Skills

  • Strong communicator: able to translate technical findings into business risk and actionable developer guidance.
  • Collaborative mindset: proven experience working cross-functionally with engineering, product, and ops teams to drive secure outcomes.
  • Problem solver and pragmatic: prioritizes high-impact fixes and advocates for practical security improvements that balance usability and risk.
  • Mentorship and teaching ability: comfortable delivering workshops, training sessions, and code reviews to uplift developer security skills.
  • Detail-oriented with strong documentation practices for reproducibility and audit trails.
  • Resilient and calm under pressure during incidents and escalations.
  • Strategic thinker: capable of building long-term security roadmaps aligned with product and business goals.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Cybersecurity, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Cybersecurity or related field, or relevant industry certifications (OSCP, OSWE, CISSP, CEH, GIAC AppSec).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Cybersecurity
  • Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–8+ years in application/web security, penetration testing, or secure engineering roles.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years focusing on web application security and API security in production environments.
  • Demonstrated track record implementing security automation in CI/CD and reducing vulnerability backlog through engineering enablement.
  • Experience in cloud-native architectures and securing microservices, serverless, and containerized applications.
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