Senior Application Security Engineer III

About us:
Spring Financial is a Canadian financial technology company focused on making every day financial services simpler, faster, and more accessible.
We build technology that helps Canadians build credit, save money, and access lending products without unnecessary friction. Our platforms allow customers to apply and manage their finances online, by text, or over the phone, making the experience convenient and flexible.
Since launching in 2014, Spring has grown into one of Canada's largest fintechs, with over 250,000+ product originations across credit-building products, personal lending, and mortgage solutions. We're a fast-growing, product-driven team that values practical solutions, strong execution, and thoughtful collaboration. We give people ownership, trust them to make decisions, and focus on building systems that scale reliably.
If you're interested in working on real-world fintech platforms used by hundreds of thousands of Canadians, Spring offers the opportunity to make a tangible impact through well-built technology.
NOTE: This is a full-time, permanent, hybrid position in downtown Vancouver. 3 set days in the office and 2 WFH.
About the role:

As a Senior Application Security Engineer at Spring, you are a technical leader and a trusted problem solver who works at the intersection of security, engineering, and the business. You own Spring's application security strategy and roadmap, aligning initiatives with risk priorities, business needs, and platform evolution. You collaborate closely with product engineering, DevOps, platform, and compliance leaders to deeply understand the “why” behind the work, ensuring the controls you design directly support customer trust, regulatory commitments, and Spring's ability to ship quickly without compromise.

You lead the design and rollout of secure development practices that span the organization, including threat modeling, secure code review, dependency management, and static and dynamic analysis. You own and evolve Spring's Secure Development Lifecycle, embedding security reviews, tooling, and guardrails into CI/CD workflows so security becomes part of how engineers build, not a gate they navigate around. You bring architectural foresight to the most sensitive systems we operate, balancing competing constraints, identifying long-term risks, and making thoughtful trade-offs between speed, defense-in-depth, and developer experience. You have a track record of making security simpler, more reliable, and more maintainable over time, and of influencing others to do the same.

This is primarily an individual contributor role, but you may lead a small team of engineers or act as the technical owner for application security across the organization. You lead by example through strong technical execution, collaborative problem-solving, and a practical, risk-aware approach to security. You evaluate and implement security tools and services (e.g., SAST, DAST, SBOM, secrets scanning, WAF, CSPM) that improve detection and resilience, and you measure their impact rather than their presence.

You model and champion the use of AI tools in the application security process, using them to increase coverage, speed, and exploratory capacity across reviews, threat modeling, and detection engineering. You help others adopt AI responsibly, and you remain critical of its output, especially in security-sensitive contexts where confident wrong answers are dangerous. You set the bar for testing, automation, and operational excellence in everything appsec touches.

You are a strong partner to engineering leadership, product, compliance, and the executive team. You help leaders frame complex security trade-offs, clarify ambiguous risks, and align technical decisions with business strategy. You own or contribute to incident response for application-related exposures, lead post-incident learning, and translate findings into systemic improvements. You support Spring's compliance posture, including SOC 2 readiness and audit participation, and you track and communicate Spring's application security posture through clear metrics, risk registers, and executive-level reporting. You mentor application security engineers and elevate the practice across Spring.

What you'll do:

• Shape and drive Spring's application security strategy and roadmap, aligning initiatives with risk priorities, business priorities, and platform evolution.
• Lead the definition and rollout of secure development practices across engineering: threat modeling, secure code review, dependency management, and static and dynamic analysis.
• Define and manage Spring's SDL, embedding security reviews, tooling, and guardrails into CI/CD workflows and moving them from advisory to enforced with clear exception handling.
• Partner with engineering, DevOps, and platform teams to identify and remediate security risks across applications, services, APIs, and cloud environments.
• Evaluate, select, and implement security tools and services (e.g., SAST, DAST, SBOM, secrets scanning, WAF, CSPM) that meaningfully improve detection and resilience.
• Champion the responsible use of AI in application security workflows, and identify opportunities to integrate AI into Spring's security tooling and detection capabilities.
• Set the security bar for AI-powered features and internal AI tooling, including risks such as prompt injection, data leakage, and excessive agent permissions.
• Own or contribute to incident response for application-related vulnerabilities and exposures, leading post-incident learning and turning findings into systemic improvements.
• Support Spring's compliance posture, including SOC 2 readiness, audit participation, and evidence gathering for application-level controls and privacy obligations (e.g., PIPEDA).
• Act as a subject matter expert for product and engineering teams on secure architecture, data protection, and third-party risk.
• Mentor and grow the appsec team, supporting both technical depth and cross-functional influence; may lead a small team of engineers.
• Track and communicate security posture through clear metrics, risk registers, and executive-level reporting.

What we're looking for:

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in application security, software engineering, or security engineering, including at least 2 years leading security initiatives or acting as a technical owner.".
• Deep knowledge of web and cloud application security principles, the OWASP Top 10, and secure coding best practices.
• Proven experience implementing SDL processes and integrating security into CI/CD pipelines and agile environments.
• Define how vulnerabilities are prioritized, tracked, and closed across Spring, including remediation targets, exceptions, and risk acceptance.
• Fluency in threat modeling frameworks (e.g., STRIDE, PASTA) and secure architecture reviews for business-critical systems.
• Strong familiarity with cloud-native architecture (e.g., AWS, microservices, containerization, API gateways).
• Deep hands-on experience operating automated security testing at scale, including tuning, noise reduction, and measuring effectiveness. (e.g., Snyk, GitHub Advanced Security, Burp Suite, Semgrep, Checkov, or similar).
• Solid understanding of common identity, access, and secrets management patterns (e.g., OAuth/OIDC, SSO, token handling, cloud IAM and least privilege).
• Track record of leading cross-functional security initiatives and influencing engineering and business stakeholders without authority.
• Strong grasp of AI tools relevant to application security and their appropriate, responsible use, and of the security risks AI introduces into applications.
• Experience supporting compliance initiatives such as SOC 2, PCI DSS, privacy regulations (e.g., PIPEDA) or ISO 27001 is a plus.
  

Nice to have

• A relevant security certification (e.g. OSCP, OSWE, BSCP, or AWS Security Specialty)
• AI security training or certification (e.g., AWS Certified AI Practitioner, Hack The Box AI Red Teamer path, OSAI)
• Regular hands-on practice (e.g., PortSwigger Web Security Academy, Hack The Box)
• Bug bounty findings or security research or open-source security contributions.
• Experience building or scaling a security program at a growth-stage company

What We Will Give You:

• Competitive annual salary ranging from $130,000 to $150,000, reflective of experience and impact.
• Comprehensive benefits package, including extended health, dental, and vision coverage — with 100% of monthly premiums covered by the Spring.
• GRSP matching program to support your long-term financial goals.
• A modern, collaborative workspace in the heart of downtown Vancouver.
• Ongoing career growth opportunities

Please note: Upon applying, our Talent Acquisition team will review your resume. If you qualify, we will reach out to learn more about your experience and answer any questions you may have about the role, benefits, compensation, and more. Due to high application volume, we may not be able to respond to everyone.

Thank you for your interest! We appreciate your time and look forward to reviewing your application!