Application Engineering Technical Lead - II

Global Enterprise Security (GES) partners with the lines of business across Vanguard to protect crew and client information and assets. Our sub-department, Attack Surface Reduction, provides a cohesive view into Vanguard's technical attack surface, focused on identifying, prioritizing, and managing vulnerabilities and configuration errors across the organization.

DevSecOps, part of Attack Surface Reduction, enhances the security posture of Vanguard's software applications through security automation that helps developers find and fix vulnerabilities earlier in the SDLC.

This role sits on the team responsible for orchestration and enforcement of our security scanning capabilities, including SAST, SCA, container scanning, and API security scanning. We build the platform that runs these scans across Vanguard's pipelines and enforces security policies. You will work closely with the engineers within our team, architects, Security Architecture and Engineering (SAEP), Enterprise AI and Engineering Platforms (EAEP), IAM, Technical Security Advisors and teams across Attack Surface Reduction to shape how security testing is delivered at scale.

Key responsibilities:

• Own and evolve the platform that orchestrates security scanning across applicable applications, surfaces findings as control checks, and enforces security standards through GitHub's policy engine.
• Lead the design, development, and implementation of cloud-native platform services on AWS, using services including IAM, ECS, Lambda, Step Functions, RDS, S3, and CloudFormation.
• Develop APIs, event-driven integrations, automation services, and CI/CD capabilities that make security testing reliable at scale and easy for developers to adopt.
• Maintain the reliability of the orchestration platform as adoption grows, using automation, observability, and self-service so support does not scale with usage. 
• Partner with security and engineering teams to embed secure development practices into the development lifecycle across a growing set of scanning capabilities as the threat landscape evolves, including SAST, SCA, container, and API security testing.
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring to the team, promoting high-quality software engineering practices. 
• Champion thoughtful adoption of AI-assisted development across the team, coaching engineers on where it fits our products and delivery model and where it does not."
• Collaborate with stakeholders to define technical direction, manage risks, and ensure successful delivery of business-critical solutions.
• Partner with leaders across DevSecOps to stay aligned to senior leadership strategic initiatives, adjusting team priorities and deliverables as direction evolves.
• Drive continuous improvement in architecture, engineering standards, and operational excellence.

Qualifications:

• 8+ years of software engineering, application development, or platform engineering experience, including at least three years of hands-on development. 
• Undergraduate degree or equivalent combination of training and experience. Graduate degree preferred. 
• Strong expertise with AWS cloud technologies and cloud-native architectures.
• Strong object-oriented programming fundamentals (Java) and the ability to work effectively in more than one language. Experience with Node.js and TypeScript is a plus, and is what we use today. Willingness to learn new technologies.
• Practical perspective on AI-assisted development, including where it adds value and where it does not. Prior experience applying AI to engineering or product work is a plus; a genuine interest in doing so is expected.
• Experience designing APIs, automation solutions, CI/CD pipelines, and distributed systems.
• Experience operating and supporting production platform services, including observability and reliability practices.
• Proven ability to lead technical initiatives, build trust and influence across organizational boundaries, and mentor engineers.

Preferred experience:

• Platform engineering, DevOps, or CI/CD pipeline engineering, building services and pipelines that application and product teams across the organization depend on.
• Large-scale cloud migration or modernization work in an enterprise environment.
• Building automation solutions at enterprise scale, where adoption spans many teams.
• AWS certifications, such as Solutions Architect (Associate or Professional), DevOps Engineer Professional, or AI Practitioner.
• Understanding of application security, DevSecOps, or secure software development practices.

Special Factors

Sponsorship

About Vanguard

At Vanguard, we don't just have a mission—we're on a mission.

To work for the long-term financial wellbeing of our clients. To lead through product and services that transform our clients' lives. To learn and develop our skills as individuals and as a team. From Malvern to Melbourne, our mission drives us forward and inspires us to be our best.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.