Freelance Python Api Developer Jobs in Tampa, FL

Job Description Summary

The financial services industry is continuously targeted by sophisticated cyber adversaries ranging from criminal organizations to nation-state actors. Raymond James relies on the Cyber Threat Center (CTC) to identify, assess, and reduce technology risk across the enterprise. The Lead Application Security Engineer will be a hands-on technical leader responsible for integrating security into the software development lifecycle, assessing application and API risk, and enabling development teams to deliver resilient software at scale.
This role combines application security engineering, software security assessment, vulnerability analysis, secure software development practices, and cybersecurity architecture. The engineer will build and automate security controls across CI/CD pipelines; perform risk-based testing and threat modeling; and responsibly apply AI-assisted techniques to accelerate vulnerability discovery, triage, validation, and remediation

Job Description

This position follows a hybrid work model, with an expectation to be in the office 3 days per week at the St. Petersburg, FL Corporate Office location.

Please note: This role is not eligible for Work Visa sponsorship, either currently or in the future.

Responsibilities

• Lead application security engineering activities across web applications, APIs, mobile applications, cloud-native services, containers, and supporting platforms.

• Embed security controls throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC), including requirements, architecture, design, development, build, test, release, and post-production monitoring.

• Design, implement, tune, and govern automated security testing in CI/CD pipelines, including static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), interactive application security testing (IAST), software composition analysis (SCA), secrets detection, infrastructure-as-code scanning, container image scanning, API security testing, and mobile application testing.

• Develop reusable automation, integrations, and security-as-code using Python, PowerShell, JavaScript, shell scripting, APIs, webhooks, and pipeline platforms to reduce manual effort and improve control coverage.

• Build automated workflows that normalize, correlate, enrich, deduplicate, prioritize, ticket, route, retest, and close application vulnerability findings across security tools and engineering systems.

• LeverageAI-assisted application vulnerability analysis to summarize evidence,identifycode-to-vulnerability relationships, propose test cases, prioritizelikely exploitpaths, explain findings to developers, and draft remediation guidance.

• Evaluate and govern AI-assisted security capabilities for accuracy, privacy, data handling, prompt-injection resistance, model and supply-chain risk, reproducibility, auditability, and human oversight; measure false-positive, false-negative, and remediation-quality outcomes.

• Perform manual and tool-assisted application and API security assessments,validateexploitability,eliminatefalse positives, create proof-of-concept evidence whenappropriate, and provide clear, actionable remediation guidance.

• Lead application threat modeling and architecture risk reviews using practical methods such as abuse cases, data-flow analysis, trust-boundary analysis, and attack-path modeling.

• Partner with software engineers, architects, product owners, DevOps/platform teams, cloud teams, and risk stakeholders to translate security requirements into pragmatic engineering solutions.

• Develop andmaintainsecure coding standards, reusable security patterns, guardrails, reference implementations, and developer enablement materials aligned with OWASP guidance and recognized industry practices.

• Create risk-based service-levelobjectivesand prioritization models that account for exploitability, reachability, business criticality, data sensitivity, compensating controls, threat intelligence, and exposure.

• Define and report meaningful program metrics, including coverage, control adoption, vulnerability aging, recurrence, escape rate, mean time to remediate, automation effectiveness, and risk reduction.

• Conduct root-cause analysis for recurring vulnerability classes and drive systemic prevention through framework changes, paved-road patterns, automated controls, and targeted education.

• Serve as a technical escalation point for complex application vulnerabilities and major cybersecurity incidents;participatein an on-call rotation asrequired.

• Mentor application security engineers and developers, contribute to technical strategy and roadmaps, and remain current with emerging attack techniques, defensive technologies, and AI-enabled software development risks.

Qualifications

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Demonstratedexpertiseidentifying,validating, explaining, and remediating application and API vulnerabilities, including vulnerability classes represented in the OWASP Top 10 and OWASP API Security Top 10.

• Advanced understanding of authentication, authorization, session management, cryptography, input handling, deserialization, server-side request forgery, business-logic abuse, and modern client/server attack surfaces.

• Hands-on experience with SAST, DAST, IAST, SCA, API testing, secrets detection, container scanning, infrastructure-as-code scanning, and penetration-testing tools; ability to tune controls andvalidatetool output rather than rely solely on scanner severity.

• Strong automation and software engineering capability in Python and at least one of PowerShell, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, Java, C#, or shell; experience consuming REST/GraphQLAPIs, processing structured data, writing tests, andmaintainingproduction-quality code.

• Experience integrating security tools with CI/CD and engineering platforms such as GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, Jira, or comparable technologies.

• Demonstratedexperience applying AI-assisted or machine-learning-enabled security tooling to source-code review, vulnerability triage, exploit-path analysis, test generation, remediation support, or finding correlation.

• Ability to critically evaluate AI output, recognize hallucinations and insecure recommendations, protect sensitive source code and data, design human-in-the-loop validation, andestablishmeasurable quality and governance controls.

• Knowledge of secure AI-assisted development risks, including prompt injection, insecure output handling, excessive agency, sensitive information disclosure, model or dependency supply-chain concerns, and misuse of generated code.

• Experience securing cloud-native applications on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and/or Google Cloud Platform, including identity, secrets, workloads, APIs, containers, serverless services, and Kubernetes.

• Working knowledge of threat modeling, secure architecture principles, softwaresupply-chainsecurity, SBOM/VEX concepts, artifact integrity, dependency governance, and provenance or attestation practices.

• Ability to communicate technical risk clearly to developers, architects, executives, auditors, and non-technical stakeholders, and to translate findings into prioritized engineering actions.

• Ability to lead through influence, exercise sound judgment under uncertainty, mentor others, and balance security outcomes with client and business needs.

Education/Previous Experience:

• Typically requires aBachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, cybersecurity, information systems, or a related field and 5 or more years of relevant experience; an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience may be considered.

• Typically requires 3 or more years of hands-on application security, product security, penetration testing, secure software development, or software security assessment experience.

• Demonstratedexperience developing security automation and integrating application security controls into CI/CD workflows.

• Practical experience using AI-assisted capabilities for application vulnerability analysis, with evidence of validation, governance, and measurable improvement in security outcomes.

Certifications:

One or more of the following certifications, or the ability to obtain a relevant certification within one year, is preferred:

• GIACWeb Application Penetration Tester (GWAPT), GIAC Certified Web Application Defender (GWEB), or comparable application security certification.

• Offensive SecurityWeb Expert (OSWE) or comparable advanced assessment certification.

• AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, orDevSecOpscertification relevant to the assigned environment.

Education

Bachelor's, Bachelor's: Information Technology

Work Experience

General Experience - 6 to 10 years

Certifications

Travel

Less than 25%

Workstyle

Hybrid

The total compensation for this position includes base salary or wages, and may include components such as additional compensation (cash or equity), discretionary bonuses, or commissions. This position is eligible for a benefits package that may include medical, dental, and vision; life insurance; critical illness insurance and accident insurance; disability benefits; retirement savings; paid time off (including vacation, holidays, and sick leave); and parental leave. Eligibility for benefits and specific offerings may vary based on position and employment status. To view more details of the benefits offered, visit Myrjbenefits.com.

At Raymond James our associates use five guiding behaviors (Develop, Collaborate, Decide, Deliver, Improve) to deliver on the firm's core values of client-first, integrity, independence and a conservative, long-term view.
We expect our associates at all levels to:
Grow professionally and inspire others to do the same
Work with and through others to achieve desired outcomes
Make prompt, pragmatic choices and act with the client in mind
Take ownership and hold themselves and others accountable for delivering results that matter
Contribute to the continuous evolution of the firm

At Raymond James - as part of our people-first culture, we honor, value, and respect the uniqueness, experiences, and backgrounds of all of our Associates. When associates bring their best authentic selves, our organization, clients, and communities thrive. The Company is an equal opportunity employer and makes all employment decisions on the basis of merit and business needs.