Principal Information Security Architect - Data Security

Highmark Health • Washington, DC

4d • $129,100 - $214,500 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Principal Information Security Architect - Data Security serves as the enterprise leader for designing and advancing data security architectures that protect sensitive information across its entire lifecycle. This role partners with business, technology, data, cloud, and security teams to establish secure solutions for modern data platforms, analytics environments, distributed query engines, and enterprise data movement capabilities. The position provides technical leadership for securing platforms such as Starburst and other data services by ensuring appropriate controls for data access, sharing, storage, processing, and analytics across cloud and on-premises environments. The architect develops enterprise strategies for encryption, key management, tokenization, data masking, data classification, data loss prevention, and database security to safeguard sensitive and regulated data. This role guides the adoption of Zero Trust principles and data-centric security controls that enable secure access while reducing organizational risk. The position evaluates emerging technologies, develops security roadmaps, and promotes secure design patterns for data integration, APIs, data pipelines, and information exchange. The architect serves as a trusted advisor to executive leadership and engineering teams, helping balance business innovation, regulatory compliance, privacy requirements, and security objectives. Additionally, the role provides thought leadership for securing AI and machine learning workloads, mentors security professionals, and champions security-by-design principles across enterprise data initiatives.

Requirements

• 10 years of experience in Information Security.
• 4 years of experience as Information Security Architect with deep understanding of domains of security (e.g. zero trust, data protection, identity & access mgmt., threat mgmt., etc.)
• 3 years of experience with data management, query processing, distributed processing, high availability, statistical and machine learning and operational excellence of production systems.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field of study or relevant experience and/or education as determined by the company in lieu of bachelor's degree.
• US Citizen (due to contractual/access requirements)

Nice To Haves

• 3 years of experience in Mergers and Acquisitions (evaluation, integration, etc.)
• 3 years of experience managing and leading teams.
• Masters Computer Science or related field of study.
• Security certifications (e.g. The Open Group Architecture Framework Certification (TOGAF), Certified Information Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), etc.)

Responsibilities

• Develop systems and component architectures and APIs that meet the test of time.
• Articulate and evangelize architectural principles reciprocally with engineering, architecture and product teams that ensure system components fit securely, are sustainable, and align with company’s business direction.
• Analyze and recommend novel technologies, architectural solutions (and associated business cases) to the various technology executives across the company which simultaneously optimize value, risk, spend & design footprints.
• Influence enterprise solutions architects and engineers to define, develop, maintain, and communicate the technology and platform strategy, guidelines, and re-usable design patterns to all levels including the Highmark Health executive team.
• Work with external and internal engineering teams to provide continuous architecture and design mentorship/leadership and be a source of support that ensures successful product delivery and operational excellence in production, including leadership and support for application development and change management activities.
• Establish relationships with key architects and executive technology leadership across the enterprise technology organization and collaborate on promoting architectural standard methodologies.
• Collaborate with key internal and external partners such as security, developers, development managers, product and program management and senior technical and business executives to drive the Architecture strategy, reference enterprise architecture documents, functional specifications, designs, and architectural libraries.
• Resolve approaches for new areas by quickly investigating and synthesizing the state of the art and available technologies including leading the development of enterprise solutions which meet current and future business requirements.
• Take a consultative approach to develop, present and share the value and vision of proposed architectures and solutions to a wide audience.
• Promote architecture standard methodologies and mentor key technical people within the Data Product organization.
• Champion a culture of innovation in an environment that requires high levels of scalability, security and reliability for our most critical enterprise cloud and 'on premise' applications and infrastructure.
• Other duties as assigned or requested.

Benefits

• Base pay is determined by a variety of factors including a candidate’s qualifications, experience, and expected contributions, as well as internal peer equity, market, and business considerations. The displayed salary range does not reflect any geographic differential Highmark may apply for certain locations based upon comparative markets.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal