Blockchain Software Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

At Ripple, we’re building a world where value moves like information does today. It’s big, it’s bold, and we’re already doing it. Through our crypto solutions for financial institutions, businesses, governments and developers, we are improving the global financial system and creating greater economic fairness and opportunity for more people, in more places around the world. And we get to do the best work of our career and grow our skills surrounded by colleagues who have our backs.

If you’re ready to see your impact and unlock incredible career growth opportunities, join us, and build real world value.

As a Senior Staff Security Engineer, you will be one of Ripple's most senior technical security practitioners, operating at the intersection of application security, cloud infrastructure security, and secure software delivery. This role exists to raise the technical bar and extend Ripple's security posture as the engineering organization scales across new products, new architectures, and an increasingly sophisticated threat landscape.

You will serve as the dedicated security engineering partner for Ripple Treasury. You will lead the technical direction for product and infrastructure security, partnering with Ripple Treasury Product and Engineering teams to drive secure design, threat modeling, vulnerability management, and cloud security architecture.

• Serve as the dedicated Security Engineering partner for Ripple Treasury BU, owning the security posture of the Treasury solution and infrastructure environment from assessment through remediation and ongoing maturity improvement.
• Lead threat modeling and security architecture reviews across Treasury offerings.
• Own the secure software development lifecycle for your product surface area, defining security guardrails, CI/CD integrations, and developer guidance that make secure by default a practical reality.
• Drive the cloud security architecture for Treasury across Azure and AWS, including IAM, network segmentation, encryption, zero trust controls, Kubernetes traffic policies, and DDoS and WAF strategy, ensuring full alignment with Ripple's infrastructure standards as Treasury integrates.
• Partner with GRC to ensure Treasury meets its compliance obligations across SOC 2, ISO 27001, and applicable financial regulatory frameworks as the BU integrates into Ripple's governance program.
• Own vulnerability discovery via security assessments, penetration testing and bug bounty, driving findings through triage, prioritization, remediation, and validation with a bias toward automation and developer self-service.
• Build and scale a Security Champions model within Treasury Engineering, embedding security advocates who extend the Security Engineering team's reach at scale.
• Influence engineering architecture decisions at the senior level, participating in design reviews and architectural assessments with the standing to raise security concerns that get acted on.
• Mentor and develop Security Engineers, raising the technical bar through threat model walkthroughs, design discussions, and structured knowledge sharing.
• Stay ahead of the threat landscape for FinTech, crypto, and enterprise treasury systems, translating emerging attack techniques into concrete defensive improvements across platforms and systems.

• 10+ years of Security Engineering experience, including hands‑on work in Product Security and Infrastructure Security.
• Expert-level product security skills including threat modeling using STRIDE or equivalent, security architecture review, OWASP Top 10 and beyond, API security, authentication and authorization design, and secure SDLC development.
• Deep expertise in securing cloud environments across Azure, AWS, and/or GCP, covering IAM architecture, network security, secrets management, container and Kubernetes security, and infrastructure as code security.
• Hands‑on experience building and operating DevSecOps tooling, including static analysis, dynamic analysis, software composition analysis, secrets scanning, container scanning, and CI/CD pipeline security integration.
• Strong software engineering skills in Python, Go, or equivalent, with the ability to build security tooling, automate controls, and integrate security into engineering workflows without relying on third‑party tools for everything.
• Experience with cryptographic principles and key management, including HSMs, MPC, PKI, and key rotation, with an understanding of the consequences of key management failure in financial infrastructure.
• Background in FinTech, crypto, blockchain, or high‑stakes financial environments is a strong plus, particularly where security failures have direct customer or systemic financial impact.
• A practitioner’s approach. Most effective when close to the work, writing threat models, reviewing architecture documents, reading code, and building tooling.

Other common names for this role: Security Architecture, Security Engineering Lead

$220,000 – $275,000 USD

• The opportunity to build in a fast‑paced start‑up environment with experienced industry leaders
• A learning environment where you can dive deep into the latest technologies and make an impact. A professional development budget to support other modes of learning.
• Thrive in an environment where no matter what race, ethnicity, gender, origin or culture they identify with, every employee is a respected, valued, and empowered part of the team.
• In‑office collaboration for moments that matter is important to our culture, and we give managers and teams the flexibility to decide which 10+ days a month they come in.
• Bi‑weekly all‑company meeting – business updates and ask‑me‑anything style discussion with our Leadership Team
• We come together for moments that matter which include team offsites, team bonding activities, happy hours and more!

• Competitive salary, bonuses, and equity
• Competitive benefits that cover physical and mental healthcare, retirement, family forming, and family support
• Employee giving match
• Mobile phone stipend

• R&R days so you can rest and recharge
• Generous wellness reimbursement and weekly onsite & virtual programming
• Generous vacation policy – work with your manager to take time off when you need it
• Industry‑leading parental leave policies. Family planning benefits.
• Catered lunches, fully‑stocked kitchens with premium snacks/beverages, and plenty of fun events

Benefits listed above are for full‑time employees.

Ripple is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We do not discriminate against qualified employees or applicants because of race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, sexual identity, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, military status, or any other characteristic protected by local law or ordinance.

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