Application Security Engineer

Vestwell is hiring an Application Security Engineer to help secure NestJS applications and identity integrations that support its products. This hybrid role in Scottsdale, AZ focuses on reducing risk across the software development lifecycle, strengthening OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect (OIDC) implementations, and supporting security testing and incident readiness.

Responsibilities

• Review NestJS and TypeScript applications for vulnerabilities across authentication, authorization, input validation, injection, session security, API and business-logic flaws, and data protection.
• Apply and refine secure development patterns in NestJS, including guards, interceptors, middleware, decorators, validation, error handling, logging, configuration, and dependency management.
• Support security for OIDC integrations when operating as an identity provider, including authorization, token, user-info, discovery, key-set, and logout endpoints.
• Support security for OIDC integrations when operating as a relying party, including client registration, redirect handling, authorization-code flows, token exchange, session establishment, and logout.
• Review OAuth 2.0 and OIDC flows such as authorization code with PKCE, refresh tokens, client authentication, scopes, consent, state, nonce, redirect URI validation, and token lifetimes (with guidance for more complex cases).
• Help maintain authorization models using RBAC and, where applicable, claims-based or policy-based access control.
• Evaluate 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 to 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, prioritize findings by exploitability and business impact, and verify fixes.
• Monitor application and identity security signals, assist 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 audit and customer assurance evidence.
• Stay current on application security, identity, OAuth/OIDC, browser security, API security, cloud security, and emerging attack techniques.

Requirements

• 2-4 years of professional experience in application security, product security, software engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Experience securing Node.js 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, 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 for 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 with CI/CD and developer workflows, or willingness to integrate security with minimal friction.
• Good communication skills to explain security findings and risk to technical teammates.
• Pragmatic, collaborative approach, including eagerness to learn, ask good questions, and work with more senior engineers to propose proportional controls.

Technologies

• NestJS
• TypeScript
• Node.js
• OAuth 2.0
• OpenID Connect (OIDC)

Benefits

• Comprehensive health benefits
• Generous time off
• Dedicated Employee Wellbeing Committee
• Competitive 401(k) plan
• Company Bonus Pool eligibility
• New hire equity in the Company

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.

Interview Process

• The process begins with 1-2 introductory conversations.
• Next, candidates participate in a virtual or in-person interview panel.
• Before an offer, Vestwell completes a reference check with a current or former manager and a peer.

Work Model and Location

This role is based in Scottsdale, AZ and will be part of Vestwell’s hybrid in-office operation.

Compensation

• Expected base salary range: $140,000 - $150,000 per year
• Eligible to participate in the Company Bonus Pool
• Eligible to receive new hire equity in the Company

Candidate Correspondence

For your awareness, you will only receive correspondence from [email protected]. Any other domain not ending in vestwell.com is not the Recruitment team.