Application Security Engineer

Vestwell is building secure, identity-aware applications and is hiring an Application Security Engineer to strengthen application security across the software development lifecycle. In this hybrid role in King of Prussia, you will focus on securing NestJS and TypeScript services, while also supporting the security of OIDC capabilities as both an identity provider (IdP) and relying party (RP).

You will partner with engineering teams to identify vulnerabilities, improve secure development patterns in NestJS, and strengthen OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect implementations. The work includes security testing, threat modeling, design and code reviews, and helping maintain documentation and audit readiness for identity and application security.

Responsibilities

• Analyze NestJS and TypeScript applications for authentication, authorization, input validation, injection, session, API, business-logic, and data-protection vulnerabilities.
• Apply and refine secure development patterns for NestJS, including guards, interceptors, middleware, decorators, validation, error handling, logging, configuration, and dependency management.
• Contribute to the security of OIDC integrations and identity platform capabilities as an identity provider (IdP), including authorization, token, user-info, discovery, key-set, and logout endpoints.
• Contribute to the security of OIDC integrations and identity platform capabilities as a relying party (RP), 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, with guidance from senior team members on 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 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, help prioritize findings by exploitability and business impact, and verify fixes.
• Monitor 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

• 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 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 willingness to integrate security into them with minimal friction.
• Good communication skills and ability to explain security findings and risk to technical teammates.
• Pragmatic, collaborative approach, including willingness to learn, ask good questions, and work with more senior engineers to implement proportional controls.

Technologies

• NestJS, TypeScript, Node.js
• OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, OIDC
• PKCE, RBAC, JWT, JWKS
• CI/CD
• SAST, DAST, software composition analysis, secret scanning, API testing, dependency monitoring
• Auth0, Okta, Keycloak, Cognito, Azure AD/Entra ID, SAML
• Burp Suite, Semgrep, CodeQL, Snyk, Dependabot, OWASP ZAP, OWASP ASVS, NIST SSDF

Benefits

• Comprehensive health benefits
• Generous time off
• Dedicated Employee Wellbeing Committee
• 401(k) plan

Interview Process

• 1-2 introductory conversations to learn about background and interests, and to learn more about Vestwell and the team.
• Role-dependent steps, typically including a skills or experience-based assessment (for example, a coding interview, portfolio review, or deeper discussion).
• Successful candidates move to a virtual or in-person interview panel.
• Before an offer, a reference check is completed with a current or former manager and a peer.
• Transparency and clear communication are prioritized throughout the process.

Location and Work Model

• Hybrid role based in the King of Prussia, PA office.
• Access to collaborative offices in Midtown Manhattan, Austin, King of Prussia, and Scottsdale.
• This role will be part of Vestwell’s hybrid in-office operation.

Compensation

• 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.
• Salary bands are based on NY and similar metro areas and may differ based on where the role is ultimately hired.

Recruiting contact notice: You will only receive correspondence from [email protected]. Any other domain not ending in vestwell.com is not part of Vestwell’s Recruitment team.