Principal Security Architect

About the role

This role involves establishing and maintaining security architecture patterns, principles, and reference designs for Copperco's platforms and infrastructure. The Principal Security Architect will have formal sign-off authority for significant security changes, providing senior technical guidance in architectural and business decisions. This position requires balancing security requirements with delivery pressures, ensuring robust security across all aspects of the company's digital asset operations.

A key focus is providing architectural security leadership for Copperco's signing infrastructure, which utilizes Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology. This includes reviewing and approving changes to transaction construction, signing flows, approval policies, and key lifecycle operations. The role also extends to multi-chain security, assessing third-party smart contracts, and reviewing first-party integrations with partner networks, ensuring a defensible security posture.

The architect will also own identity and access architecture, setting patterns for workforce, workload, and third-party identity across various systems. Maintaining fluency in AWS and Azure cloud security is essential for producing reference patterns and integration designs. Success in this role means effectively leading technical security reviews, supporting client due diligence, and contributing to security policy and regulatory compliance with a strong technical foundation.

The listed salary range for this Principal Security Architect position is between $128,000 and $212,000 USD.

Skills that matter here

• EVM blockchains: The role requires architectural depth across various blockchain types, including EVM, to understand transaction construction and consensus models.
• AWS: Working architectural fluency in AWS is needed to produce reference patterns and direct integration designs for cloud security.
• Identity and access management: This position owns identity and access architecture, setting patterns for workforce, workload, and third-party identity across various systems.
• Security architecture: The core responsibility is to shape and maintain security architecture patterns, principles, and reference designs for all engineering teams.
• Secure custody: The role provides architectural security leadership over the company's MPC-based signing infrastructure and key lifecycle operations.
• Smart contracts: The architect will assess third-party smart contract architectures and audit reports to understand exploit and risk surfaces.

Who this role suits

• A senior security professional with a proven track record of holding sign-off authority on significant architectural designs.
• Someone who can reason deeply across diverse blockchain technologies and understand cryptographic signing infrastructure.
• An individual comfortable operating credibly with engineers, business stakeholders, auditors, and regulators.
• A person capable of taking defensible positions under uncertainty and owning residual risk in complex security environments.

From the employer

Key Responsibilities:

• Architectural authority
• Hold formal security sign-off authority for major changes to Copper's platforms, infrastructure, and integrations.
• Shape and maintain the security architecture patterns, principles, and reference designs that engineering teams build against.
• Provide the senior technical security position in architectural and business decisions, including escalations where security and delivery pressures conflict.

• Custody, signing, and cryptographic architecture
• Provide architectural security leadership over Copper's signing infrastructure, working alongside specialist engineering and cryptography teams. Scope covers the people, process, and operational design around MPC-based signing. Solid conceptual grounding in threshold cryptography and signature schemes is required; cryptographer-level work is not.
• Review and approve changes to transaction construction, signing flows, approval policy, and key lifecycle operations.
• Provide architectural assurance over chain-of-trust constructs adjacent to custody, including verifiable build pipelines, hardware-backed code signing, and authenticator-bound administrative paths.

• Multi-chain and integration security
• Reason at architectural depth across the range of blockchains Copper supports, including EVM, UTXO, and account-based non-EVM families. This requires a working understanding of transaction construction, signing semantics, consensus assumptions, and validator and staking models across these environments, without being a protocol engineer in any of them.
• Assess third-party smart contract architectures, implementations, and audit reports to a level sufficient to understand the exploit and risk surface, without performing line-by-line code review.
• Review first-party integrations with partner networks, including those underpinning staking and similar on-chain participation, and form a defensible security position on the operational and contract risk Copper inherits.

• Settlement, collateral, and off-exchange architecture
• Provide architectural ownership of the security model for Copper's settlement, collateral mirroring, and off-exchange product surfaces.
• Reason about the trust boundaries between Copper, venues, and clients, and ensure architectural controls match the obligations each side carries.

• Identity and access architecture
• Own identity and access architecture as a dedicated pillar of the role.
• Set patterns for workforce, workload, and third-party identity across Entra ID, federated SSO, OAuth2 / OIDC, SAML, and modern authenticators.
• Govern entitlement design, privileged access, and access models for contractors, vendors, and external operators.

• Cloud and platform security
• Maintain working architectural fluency in both AWS and Azure, including network topology, segmentation, secrets handling, and platform telemetry.
• Produce reference patterns and, where needed, direct integration designs in the cloud and platform space.

• Third-party and protocol risk
• Lead technical security review of vendors, integrated venues, and protocols, including challenge of assurances that do not stand up to scrutiny.
• Support client and counterparty due diligence on the technical content most likely to be misrepresented or under-specified.

• Policy, regulatory, and assurance support
• Maintain a working understanding of the regulatory regimes applicable to Copper's licensed entities sufficient to translate architectural decisions into language Compliance and GRC can defend. Primary ownership of regulatory positioning sits elsewhere.
• Contribute to security policy, standards, and control framework development as the senior technical reviewer.
• Participate in resilience exercises and incident reviews where architectural input materially shapes the outcome.

Skills and Experience:

• Essential
• Multi-chain architectural literacy. Able to reason across EVM, UTXO, and non-EVM account-based chains at the level of transaction construction, signing, consensus, and validator models. Comfortable assessing third-party smart contract designs, implementations, and audit reports for exploit and risk surface without performing code review.
• Custody and signing architecture. Strong conceptual grasp of threshold signing, signature schemes, and key lifecycle. Able to design and challenge the operational architecture around signing, separation of duties, approval policy, key ceremony equivalents in MPC, and recovery, to a high standard.
• Settlement and collateral architecture. Demonstrable experience reasoning about settlement, collateral, and off-exchange constructs, including trust boundaries between custodians, venues, and clients.
• Identity and access architecture. Senior-level experience designing and governing identity across Entra ID, federated SSO, OAuth2 / OIDC, SAML, and modern authenticators. Comfortable with entitlement governance and third-party access design.
• Cloud security. Working architectural understanding of AWS and Azure, including the ability to produce reference patterns and limited direct integration designs.
• Architectural authority and judgement. Track record of holding sign-off on significant designs, taking defensible positions under uncertainty, and owning residual risk.
• Change review and assurance. Comfortable reviewing the work of engineering peers, infrastructure changes, and vendor designs, and able to hold the line where it matters.
• Communication. Able to operate credibly with engineers, senior business stakeholders, auditors, and regulators in the same week, without losing precision at any of them.

• Desirable
• Familiarity with chain-of-trust constructs including verifiable builds, reproducible build pipelines, and hardware-backed code signing.
• Awareness of the regulatory landscape relevant to digital asset custody and trading (for example FCA, FINMA, FSRA / ADGM, MiCA).
• Compliance familiarity across ISO 27001, SOC 2, and NIST CSF / 800-53, with the ability to map controls cleanly between them.
• Enterprise architecture grounding (TOGAF, SABSA) where it complements rather than replaces technical depth.

Benefits:

• Paid Time Off - A minimum of 35 days of paid time off per year, inclusive of annual leave and public holidays. Employees also receive one additional day of annual leave for each year of service.
• Comprehensive Medical Insurance - Inclusive of dental, optical, audiology, and mental health coverage, with medical history disregarded.
• Life Insurance.
• Enhanced Pension Contributions - Includes an enhanced employer matching contribution.
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).