Principal AI & Cloud Security Engineer

Banner Bank is building secure ways to adopt and scale AI-powered solutions across its organization, with a strong emphasis on Azure cloud technologies. This senior individual contributor Principal role focuses on AI and cloud security governance, architecture, and operational guardrails, while mentoring engineering teams on secure practices.

As the Principal AI & Cloud Security Engineer, you will define strategy and architecture for secure AI and Azure environments, lead threat modeling, and help teams implement secure SDLC and DevSecOps through enterprise controls and monitoring at scale.

Role overview

• Define and lead enterprise security strategy and architecture for AI-powered systems and Azure cloud environments, including identity, network security, data protection, and secure cloud and hybrid designs.
• Establish and govern security controls, guardrails, and runtime protections for agentic AI workflows, including tools such as Claude, GitHub Copilot, and custom AI agents.
• Lead threat modeling for AI systems and Azure-hosted workloads, focusing on risks from adversarial inputs, cloud vulnerabilities, autonomous agents, and emerging attack vectors.
• Evaluate AI-generated and cloud-integrated code for security, quality, correctness, and performance, and define enterprise standards for secure code review practices.
• Architect and oversee security tooling and monitoring that evaluate, monitor, and harden AI agents and Azure resources at scale using technologies such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Monitor, and Microsoft Sentinel.
• Embed security governance into the software development lifecycle and Azure DevSecOps pipelines through Security Posture Management, Azure Policy, Key Vault, and Infrastructure-as-Code standards.
• Research emerging AI and cloud security threats, regulations, and industry trends, translating findings into actionable enterprise security improvements.
• Mentor and influence engineering teams on secure AI adoption, cloud security best practices, and enterprise security standards.

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field (Required). An equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
• 8+ years of experience in security engineering, secure SDLC, threat modeling, and Azure cloud security, including designing and governing security controls for AI/ML, generative AI, and agentic systems in enterprise cloud environments (Required).

Preferred qualifications

• Master's degree (Preferred).
• Experience in financial services or banking environments (Preferred).
• Industry-recognized security certifications such as CISSP, Azure Security Engineer, GIAC, or similar credentials (Preferred).

Technologies

• Azure
• Claude
• GitHub Copilot
• Microsoft Defender for Cloud
• Azure Monitor
• Microsoft Sentinel
• Microsoft Entra ID
• Azure Policy
• Key Vault
• Security Posture Management
• Infrastructure-as-Code
• Bicep, ARM, Terraform
• Python, Go, Rust, C/C++

Compensation and benefits

• Targeted starting salary range (based on geography & experience): $135,000 - $178,000 per year.
• Comprehensive employee benefits, including medical, dental, vision, LTD, STD, and life.
• Paid vacation, sick time, and 11 company paid holidays.
• 401k with up to 4% match.
• Tuition reimbursement.

Travel

• Up to 20% travel may be required.

Location: Remote (remote).