Security Engineering Manager

SmartBiz Bank • Northbrook, IL

17d • $165,000 - $175,000

About The Position

SmartBiz Bank is seeking an experienced Security Engineering Manager to lead its security engineering function and help define and execute the company’s security strategy. This is a hands-on individual contributor role with no direct reports. The position reports to the Director of DevOps and IT and works closely with the CTO and Director of DevOps and IT to set security strategy and priorities while remaining directly involved in technical security work.

The role requires strong technical judgment, thoughtful prioritization, and effective collaboration across Engineering, DevOps, IT, Risk, Compliance, and other teams. The Security Engineering Manager will identify and prioritize impactful security improvements, balancing security and risk-management needs with available resources and business requirements in a regulated environment.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of experience in information security or security engineering, including meaningful hands-on engineering experience.
• Experience owning or significantly influencing a security engineering program in a regulated environment.
• Strong AWS and cloud security knowledge.
• Experience securing Kubernetes and containerized environments.
• Deep understanding of IAM, network security, encryption, secrets management, and cloud security architecture.
• Strong application security and secure-SDLC experience.
• Hands-on vulnerability-management experience.
• Experience with SIEM, security telemetry, detection engineering, and incident response.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD security.
• Experience in regulated financial-services environments and familiarity with frameworks and requirements such as NIST CSF, CIS Controls, FFIEC guidance, and GLBA.
• Strong communication skills, particularly the ability to translate technical risk for executives.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the security engineering strategy and roadmap in partnership with the CTO and Director of DevOps and IT.
• Serve as the technical security leader for cloud infrastructure, applications, identity, endpoints, and developer platforms.
• Design, implement, and continuously improve security architecture and preventive and detective controls across the cloud environment.
• Assess and prioritize security initiatives based on risk, impact, effort, and available resources.
• Partner with Engineering, DevOps, IT, Risk, and Compliance to coordinate and execute security improvements.
• Mature application security practices, including threat modeling, security design reviews, SAST, SCA, DAST, secrets scanning, vulnerability triage, and remediation.
• Own and mature vulnerability management across applications, cloud infrastructure, containers, endpoints, and third-party software.
• Strengthen identity and access security through least privilege, privileged-access controls, secure service identities, authentication controls, and secrets management.
• Develop and improve security monitoring, logging, detection, alerting, and investigation capabilities.
• Lead technical security incident response, including investigation, containment, remediation, root-cause analysis, and post-incident improvements.
• Perform security architecture reviews for new applications, infrastructure, SaaS platforms, vendors, and major technology initiatives.
• Establish practical security standards, policies, and technical guardrails that support secure operations without unnecessarily slowing delivery.
• Support regulatory examinations, audits, risk assessments, and compliance initiatives by translating requirements into effective technical controls.
• Develop security metrics and communicate security posture, material risks, priorities, incidents, and roadmap progress to technical and executive audiences.
• Build and maintain security documentation, standards, procedures, playbooks, and incident-response processes.
• Promote security awareness, engineering education, and a strong security culture across the organization.

Benefits

• Mission-driven culture focused on small business banking.
• Competitive compensation and equity participation where applicable.
• Employer-paid medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance for eligible employees and dependents.
• 401(k) retirement plan.
• Flexible vacation policy.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed