Application Security Engineer

Vestwell is the financial technology company powering the new savings economy. The New York City-based fintech platform redefines how people save for the critical aspects of life across retirement education and healthcare savings needs. Today Vestwell enables over 790000 businesses and more than 2.75 million active savers with over $57 billion in assets saved across all 50 United States.

Vestwell offers a range of products including workplace-delivered retirement plans employer-offered student loan repayment benefits and various savings accounts for education emergencies and individuals with disabilities.

Vestwells platform serves a diverse clientele including financial advisers employers third-party administrators financial institutions payroll providers government agencies and individual savers. To learn more

Who Are We Looking For

We are looking for an Application Security Engineer to help secure the applications and identity integrations that power our products. This role will focus on analyzing and protecting our NestJS applications applying strong application security practices across the software development lifecycle and supporting the security of our identity capabilities as both an identity provider (IdP) and a relying party (RP) in OIDC integrations and internal application usage.

You will work closely with software engineering platform infrastructure and product teams to identify risk implement practical mitigations and make secure-by-default development easier. The ideal candidate combines solid hands-on application security skills with a working knowledge of modern authentication and authorization protocols and is eager to grow deeper expertise in identity security.

What Will You Be Doing

• Analyze NestJS and TypeScript applications for authentication authorization input validation injection session API business-logic and data-protection vulnerabilities.
• Apply and help refine secure development patterns for NestJS including guards interceptors middleware decorators validation error handling logging configuration and dependency management.
• Contribute to the security of our OIDC integrations and identity platform capabilities when we operate as:
• An identity provider including authorization token user-info discovery key-set and logout endpoints.
• A relying party including client registration redirect handling authorization-code flows token exchange session establishment and logout.
• Review OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect flows including authorization code with PKCE refresh tokens client authentication scopes consent state nonce redirect URI validation and token lifetimes under guidance from senior team members for more complex cases.
• Help apply and maintain authorization models using RBAC and where appropriate claims-based or policy-based access control.
• Review access-control boundaries across services APIs tenants users roles permissions and administrative functions.
• Participate in threat modeling security design reviews architecture reviews and secure code reviews.
• Contribute to security requirements reusable libraries reference implementations and developer guidance that reduce recurring risk.
• Support security testing and detection efforts including SAST DAST software composition analysis secret scanning API testing dependency monitoring and targeted security testing.
• Partner with engineering teams to remediate vulnerabilities help prioritize findings by exploitability and business impact and verify fixes.
• Monitor relevant application and identity security signals support incident investigations and help maintain playbooks for account takeover token compromise authorization bypass credential abuse and related events.
• Help maintain security documentation standards risk exceptions and evidence needed for audits and customer assurance.
• Stay current on application security identity OAuth/OIDC browser security API security cloud security and emerging attack techniques.

Requirements

The Necessities

• 2-4 years of professional experience in application security product security software engineering or a closely related discipline.
• Experience securing and TypeScript applications; familiarity with NestJS is a strong plus.
• Working knowledge of OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect concepts and common implementation pitfalls.
• Exposure to IdP and/or RP implementations integrations or security assessments.
• Solid understanding of authentication and authorization concepts including RBAC least privilege claims scopes permissions sessions and tokens.
• Ability to review code across APIs web applications and background jobs with support from senior engineers on more complex architectural or distributed-systems questions.
• Familiarity with web and API security risks including OWASP Top 10 OWASP API Security Top 10 broken access control SSRF injection XSS CSRF insecure deserialization and misconfiguration.
• Basic understanding of secure token handling JWT validation JWKS signing algorithms and token storage considerations.
• Some experience working with CI/CD and developer workflows or a willingness to learn how to integrate security into them with minimal friction.
• Good communication skills and the ability to explain security findings and risk to technical teammates.
• A pragmatic collaborative approach: eager to learn ask good questions and work with more senior engineers to propose and implement proportional controls.

The Extras

• Exposure to identity platforms or libraries such as Auth0 Okta Keycloak Cognito Azure AD/Entra ID or comparable systems.
• Familiarity with SAML integrations for single sign-on solutions.
• Exposure to API gateways microservices event-driven systems and cloud-native deployments.
• Familiarity with containers infrastructure as code secrets management and cloud IAM basics.
• Experience with security tooling such as Burp Suite Semgrep CodeQL Snyk Dependabot OWASP ZAP or equivalent tools.
• Familiarity with security standards such as OWASP ASVS or NIST SSDF.
• Interest in pursuing relevant security certifications.

This role will be based in either the New York City Austin King of Prussia or Scottsdale office and will be part of Vestwells hybrid in-office operation.

The expected base salary range for this position is $140K - $150K base. This position is eligible to participate in the Company Bonus Pool and is eligible to receive new hire equity in the Company. Please note that salary bands are based on NY and other similar metro areas and may differ based on where the role is ultimately hired.

Full-Time Employee Benefits
Were an innovative high-growth company with an exciting future ahead. At Vestwell we prioritize employee wellbeing through comprehensive health benefits generous time off and a dedicated Employee Wellbeing Committee. Our hybrid work model offers flexibility while providing access to our collaborative offices in Midtown Manhattan Austin King of Prussia and Scottsdale. And of course as a company focused on helping people save for the future we offer a competitive 401(k) plan.

Interview Process
Our interview process starts the same for every candidate with 1-2 introductory conversations to learn more about your background interests and what youre looking for while also giving you the opportunity to learn more about Vestwell and the team. From there the process varies by role but typically includes a skills or experience-based assessment such as a coding interview portfolio review or deeper discussion of your relevant experience. Successful candidates then move on to a virtual or in-person interview panel. Before extending an offer we complete a reference check with a current or former manager and a peer. Throughout the process we prioritize transparency clear communication and minimizing surprises.

For your awareness you will only receive correspondence from any other domain not ending not our Recruitment team.

VestwellsPrivacy Policy.Attention California residents: In the course of conducting our business and complying with federal state and local government regulations governing such matters as employment tax insurance etc. we must collect Personal Information from you. Should you accept employment with Vestwell you may view our California Privacy Rights Act here:Vestwells California Privacy Rights Policy.