---
title: 'Staff Application Security Engineer at Vestwell'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-application-security-engineer-vestwell-new-york-z9djh7rnk3fa'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-08'
---

# Staff Application Security Engineer at Vestwell

- **Company:** Vestwell
- **Location:** New York, NY / Austin, TX / King of Prussia, PA / Scottsdale, AZ
- **Posted:** 2026-11-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-08
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/vestwell/jobs/8196625003

## Job description

Vestwell is the financial technology company powering the new savings economy. The New York City-based fintech platform redefines how people save for the critical aspects of life across retirement, education, and healthcare savings needs. Today, Vestwell enables over 790,000 businesses and more than 2.75 million active savers, with over $57 billion in assets saved across all 50 United States.

Vestwell offers a range of products, including workplace-delivered retirement plans, employer-offered student loan repayment benefits, and various savings accounts for education, emergencies, and individuals with disabilities.

Vestwell's platform serves a diverse clientele, including financial advisers, employers, third-party administrators, financial institutions, payroll providers, government agencies, and individual savers. To learn more, visit [vestwell.com](http://vestwell.com/)

Who Are We Looking For?

We are looking for a Staff Application Security Engineer to help secure the applications and identity integrations that power our products. This role will focus on analyzing and protecting our NestJS applications, strengthening application security practices across the software development lifecycle, and owning the security of our identity capabilities as both an identity provider (IdP) and a relying party (RP) in OIDC integrations and internal application usage.

You will work closely with software engineering, platform, infrastructure, and product teams to identify risk early, design practical mitigations, and make secure-by-default development easier. The ideal candidate combines strong hands-on application security skills with deep knowledge of modern authentication and authorization protocols.

What Will You Be Doing?

- Analyze NestJS and TypeScript applications for authentication, authorization, input validation, injection, session, API, business-logic, and data-protection vulnerabilities.
- Establish and evolve secure development patterns for NestJS, including guards, interceptors, middleware, decorators, validation, error handling, logging, configuration, and dependency management.
- Own or contribute to the security architecture of our OIDC integrations and identity platform capabilities when we operate as:
- An identity provider, including authorization, token, user-info, discovery, key-set, and logout endpoints.
- A relying party, including client registration, redirect handling, authorization-code flows, token exchange, session establishment, and logout.
- Design, review, and assess OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect flows, including authorization code with PKCE, refresh tokens, client authentication, scopes, consent, state, nonce, redirect URI validation, token lifetimes, and key rotation.
- Help define and enforce 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.
- Lead or participate in threat modeling, security design reviews, architecture reviews, and secure code reviews.
- Build security requirements, reusable libraries, reference implementations, and developer guidance that reduce recurring risk.
- Improve security testing and detection through 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 relevant application and identity security signals, support incident investigations, and contribute to 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

The Necessities

- Professional experience in application security, product security, software engineering, or a closely related discipline.
- Strong experience securing Node.js and TypeScript applications; hands-on experience with NestJS is required or highly preferred.
- Deep understanding of OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, including common implementation pitfalls and secure deployment patterns.
- Practical experience with both IdP and RP implementations, integrations, or security assessments.
- Strong understanding of authentication and authorization concepts, including RBAC, least privilege, separation of duties, claims, scopes, permissions, sessions, tokens, and service-to-service access.
- Ability to review code and architecture across APIs, web applications, background jobs, and distributed services.
- Experience with web and API security risks, including OWASP Top 10, OWASP API Security Top 10, broken access control, SSRF, injection, XSS, CSRF, insecure deserialization, request forgery, misconfiguration, and supply-chain risk.
- Familiarity with secure token handling, JWT validation, key management, JWKS, signing algorithms, rotation, revocation, and token storage considerations.
- Experience integrating security into CI/CD and developer workflows without creating unnecessary friction.
- Strong communication skills and the ability to explain security risks and tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- A pragmatic, collaborative approach: you can identify meaningful risk, propose proportional controls, and help teams implement them.

The Extras

- Experience with OAuth 2.1 guidance, FAPI, PAR, JAR, DPoP, sender-constrained tokens, or other advanced OAuth security patterns.
- Experience with identity platforms or libraries such as Auth0, Okta, Keycloak, Cognito, Azure AD/Entra ID, or comparable systems.
- Experience with SAML integrations for single sign-on solutions.
- Experience with API gateways, service meshes, microservices, event-driven systems, and cloud-native deployments.
- Familiarity containers, infrastructure as code, secrets management, and cloud IAM.
- Experience with security tooling such as Burp Suite, Semgrep, CodeQL, Snyk, Dependabot, OWASP ZAP, or equivalent tools.
- Familiarity with security standards and guidance such as OWASP ASVS, OWASP SAMM, NIST SSDF, NIST 800-63, and relevant OAuth/OIDC specifications.
- Experience conducting penetration tests, adversarial reviews, or purple-team exercises.
- Relevant security certifications or equivalent demonstrated experience.

This role will be based in either the New York City, Austin, King of Prussia, or Scottsdale office, and will be part of Vestwell's hybrid in-office operation.

The expected base salary range for this position is $190K - $200K base. This position is eligible to participate in the Company Bonus Pool and is eligible to receive new hire equity in the Company. Please note that salary bands are based on NY and other similar metro areas and may differ based on where the role is ultimately hired. Full-Time Employee Benefits We’re an innovative, high-growth company with an exciting future ahead. At Vestwell, we prioritize employee wellbeing through comprehensive health benefits, generous time off, and a dedicated Employee Wellbeing Committee. Our hybrid work model offers flexibility while providing access to our collaborative offices in Midtown Manhattan, Austin, King of Prussia, and Scottsdale. And, of course, as a company focused on helping people save for the future, we offer a competitive 401(k) plan.

Interview Process Our interview process starts the same for every candidate with 1-2 introductory conversations to learn more about your background, interests, and what you're looking for, while also giving you the opportunity to learn more about Vestwell and the team. From there, the process varies by role but typically includes a skills or experience-based assessment, such as a coding interview, portfolio review, or deeper discussion of your relevant experience. Successful candidates then move on to a virtual or in-person interview panel. Before extending an offer, we complete a reference check with a current or former manager and a peer. Throughout the process, we prioritize transparency, clear communication, and minimizing surprises.

For your awareness you will only receive correspondence from recruiting@vestwell.com any other domain not ending in [vestwell.com](http://vestwell.com/) is not our Recruitment team.

Vestwell’s [Privacy Policy.](https://www.vestwell.com/privacy-policy) Attention California residents: In the course of conducting our business and complying with federal, state, and local government regulations governing such matters as employment, tax, insurance, etc., we must collect Personal Information from you. Should you accept employment with Vestwell you may view our California Privacy Rights Act here: [Vestwell’s California Privacy Rights Policy.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lKSzA8qE7YIAJe2ZZahLWzFp9EZP1IuS/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=111643980444675168924&rtpof=true&sd=true)

## About Vestwell

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Vestwell is a financial technology platform that powers workplace savings programs including retirement, education, emergency, and disability savings for individuals, employers, financial advisors, and government agencies.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series E)
- **Headquarters**: 360 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10017, United States
- **Founded**: 2016
- **Founders**: Not publicly available from search results

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Financial technology (Fintech), Workplace savings, Retirement services
- **Target customers**: B2B – financial advisors, employers (small to large), payroll providers, financial institutions, government agencies; B2C – individual savers
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To close the savings gap and build a culture of financial wellness for all.

## Products & Services
- **Retirement Plans (401(k), Safe Harbor 401(k), State Auto IRA)**: Workplace-delivered retirement savings plans with automated payroll sync, compliance, and administration.
- **Student Loan Repayment**: Employer benefit that helps employees pay off student loans faster, often integrated with retirement savings.
- **529 Education Savings**: Tax-advantaged accounts for future education costs.
- **ABLE Disability Savings**: Savings accounts designed for individuals with disabilities, offering tax advantages.
- **Emergency Savings**: Accounts for unexpected expenses, often offered as an employer benefit.
- **Tuition Reimbursement**: Employer benefit for education expenses.
- **White-Labeled Partnership Solutions**: Co-branded portals for advisors, flexible investment options, and integrated compliance support.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $625M raised (last round: $385M Series E ~1 year ago)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Blue Owl Capital, SLW, Morgan Stanley, HarbourVest Partners, TIAA Ventures, and 31+ other investors.
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Powers over 85% of government retirement savings programs.
  - 2M+ active savers, 500K+ businesses enabled, $50B+ assets saved across all 50 states.
  - Recognized on CNBC’s World’s Top Fintech Companies, Inc. 5000 (fastest-growing), Forbes America’s Best Startup Employers, Built In’s Best Places to Work, PLANSPONSOR’s Top 10 Recordkeepers.

## Competitive Advantages
- Trusted infrastructure: Backs over 85% of state-run retirement programs.
- Comprehensive, unified platform covering retirement, education, emergency, and disability savings.
- Multilingual, mobile-first design focused on financial equity and underserved populations.
- Deep integrations with 190+ payroll providers and automated compliance at scale.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue expanding the suite of workplace savings products (student loan, emergency, ABLE, 529).
- Scale government partnerships and white-label offerings for advisors and financial institutions.
- Drive financial inclusion through accessible, multilingual technology.
- Invest in AI and engineering talent to personalize and modernize the savings experience.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Hybrid work environment with offices in New York, Austin, King of Prussia, and Scottsdale. Typical on-site expectation is 4 days per week; remote program also offered.
- **Perks**: Competitive health coverage, generous vacation and safe/sick time, paid parental leave, strong 401(k) plan, employee wellbeing committee, and a focus on learning & development.
- **Engineering culture**: Emphasis on innovation, taking on complex challenges, and acting like an owner. 160 product + tech employees out of ~500 total.
- **Values**: “Act like an owner,” “Embrace the difficult,” “Look for the better way,” and “Help me, help you, help us.”

## Sources
1. [vestwell.com](https://vestwell.com/)
2. [greenhouse.io – Vestwell Careers](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/vestwell)
3. [cbinsights.com – Vestwell Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/vestwell)
4. [builtin.com – Vestwell Profile](https://builtin.com/company/vestwell)

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