Sr Application Security Engineer

Nelnet•Lincoln, NE

2d•$135,000 - $150,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Nelnet Business Services (NBS), a division of Nelnet, Inc., provides payment technology and education services to more than 1,200 higher education institutions, nearly 12,000 K-12 schools, and millions of individual students, families, and supporters across the globe. Our culture of service enables us to form long-lasting and trusted partnerships, while our focus on creativity and innovative solutions empowers our customer communities to thrive. We are seeking a Senior Application Security Engineer to lead hands-on application security testing, secure code review, and secure SDLC enablement across moder application environments. This role partners closely with engineering, cloud, and product teams to identify, communicate, and reduce application and services security risks from design through production. The engineer will combine manual testing expertise, automation, threat modeling, and AI assisted tooling to scale the AppSec program, improve developer security practices, and support secure, resilient applications.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
5-7+ years of hands-on application security, software security, or secure software engineering experience
Experience integrating security tooling and automated checks into CI/CD pipelines
Familiarity and experience conducting secure code review and testing web/API applications using OWASP Top 10 and web testing methodologies
Experience effectively assessing, prioritizing, documenting, and communicating vulnerabilities and risk-based remediation guidance to management and engineering audiences
Experience with technical report writing and communication
Candidates must already be authorized to work in the United States without the need for current or future sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree or specialized training in application security, cybersecurity, software engineering, cloud security, or related technical discipline.
Experience with AI/LLM-integrated applications, AI security tooling, mobile security, reverse engineering, or advanced application security certifications.

Responsibilities

Lead manual source code review across priority applications, with emphasis on business logic, access-control, authentication, authorization, and data-protection risks.
Perform and guide application security testing using SAST, DAST, SCA, container scanning, secrets detection, and web/API testing methodologies.
Expand and support the Security Champions program through enablement, coaching, secure coding guidance, and practical developer resources.
Develop and improve automated source code review processes and CI/CD security checks to help scale consistent application security coverage.
Partner with engineering, cloud, and product teams to embed secure SDLC practices into design, development, testing, release, and production support activities.
Create clear vulnerability reports that explain risk, business impact, urgency, and recommended remediation steps for technical and non-technical audiences.
Evaluate and apply AI-assisted tooling to accelerate code review, testing, triage, reporting, and secure development workflows
Advise teams on threat modeling for web, API, mobile, cloud, and AI-enabled application designs.