Senior Solution Architect – Cyber Security / Key & Secrets Management

Location: Canberra, ACT

Work Arrangement: Onsite, subject to operational requirements

Engagement: Initial 12 months, with potential extensions

Hours: Up to 40 hours per week

Security: Must be able to obtain a Positive Vetting (PV) security clearance

Powerdata Group is seeking experienced Senior Solution Architects to support a major Australian Government national security environment.

The role will provide strategic architectural leadership for the design, integration and assurance of enterprise security solutions supporting Enterprise Key Management Systems (EKMS) and Secret Management Systems (SMS).

Operating at SFIA Level 6 – Initiate and Influence, the Solution Architect will work across security, application, infrastructure, cloud, integration and information architecture domains.

The successful candidate will play a key role in ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, resilient and aligned with enterprise architecture principles, Australian Government security requirements and operational objectives.

• Lead end-to-end solution architecture for enterprise key management and secrets management capabilities.
  
• Design secure architectures covering:
  • cryptographic key lifecycle management
    
  • secrets storage and management
    
  • certificate management and PKI
    
  • privileged-access integration
    
  • automated key and secret rotation.
    
• Develop and maintain architecture artefacts, including:
  • solution designs
    
  • security models
    
  • integration patterns
    
  • infrastructure designs
    
  • data flows
    
  • technical roadmaps.
    
• Conduct architectural assessments, options analysis and technology evaluations.
  
• Balance security, scalability, performance, resilience, risk and operational supportability in solution designs.
  
• Provide architectural governance through design reviews, technical review boards, security assessments and project governance forums.
  
• Work closely with security architects, engineers, project managers, business stakeholders, vendors and operational teams.
  
• Design integration patterns enabling applications, CI/CD pipelines, container platforms and cloud services to securely consume secrets.
  
• Lead proof-of-concept activities and pilot implementations.
  
• Develop migration strategies from legacy credential and key-management solutions to modern centralised platforms.
  
• Apply Zero Trust and defence-in-depth principles to the protection of cryptographic material.
  
• Design appropriate audit, logging and monitoring capabilities for key access, usage and lifecycle events.
  
• Support security accreditation and certification activities and associated documentation.
  
• Contribute to key-management policies, operational procedures and playbooks.
  
• Identify architectural risks, dependencies and technical debt.
  
• Mentor engineers, implementation teams and junior technical personnel.
  
• Conduct architecture reviews and security risk assessments.
  

You must demonstrate:

1. 10+ years' experience leading solution architecture activities across complex enterprise security, infrastructure, cloud and/or cyber-security programs and projects.
   

2. Proven experience designing and integrating one or more of:
   

   • Enterprise Key Management Systems
     
   • Secrets Management solutions
     
   • Identity and Access Management (IAM)
     
   • PKI and certificate management
     
   • Cryptographic security solutions.
     

3. Strong knowledge of enterprise architecture methodologies, security architecture frameworks and system integration within large-scale ICT environments.
   

4. Demonstrated experience designing secure solutions across:
   

   • on-premises environments
     
   • cloud platforms
     
   • hybrid environments
     
   • highly available and resilient architectures
     
   • disaster recovery environments.
     

5. Strong stakeholder engagement and communication capability, including demonstrated ability to influence:
   

   • senior executives
     
   • governance boards
     
   • security stakeholders
     
   • architects and engineering teams
     
   • vendors.
     

6. A tertiary qualification in Information Technology, Cyber Security, Computer Science, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent demonstrated professional experience.
   

Strong candidates will ideally have experience with:

• Enterprise key-management platforms
  
• Hardware Security Modules (HSMs)
  
• Secrets-management vaults
  
• PKI and certificate-management platforms
  
• HashiCorp Vault
  
• Azure Key Vault
  
• CyberArk
  
• Microsoft Azure
  
• AWS
  
• Google Cloud Platform
  
• Cryptographic standards and key-management frameworks
  
• ASD Information Security Manual (ISM)
  
• Essential Eight
  
• Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF)
  
• Secure systems engineering
  
• Threat modelling
  
• Security accreditation
  
• Architecture assurance
  
• Zero Trust architecture
  
• CI/CD security and DevSecOps integration.