Principal Security Design Engineer

Company Overview

Iridium is an award-winning satellite communications company operating the world's only truly global voice and data network, delivering reliable connectivity anywhere on Earth. For more than 20 years, Iridium has powered mission-critical communications for governments, businesses, aviation, maritime, and the rapidly expanding Internet of Things.

Now part of Iridium, Aireon is the world’s only space-based air traffic surveillance system, providing real-time visibility of aircraft over oceans, the poles, and remote regions. Together, Iridium and Aireon are helping build a safer, more connected, and more efficient future for global aviation.

Join our team and help shape how the world stays connected. We foster a collaborative, inclusive culture where employees are empowered to innovate, grow professionally, and make a meaningful impact.

What We’re Looking For:

Iridium is building security‑critical infrastructure for a new service currently in low‑visibility proof‑of‑concept engagements with prospective partners. We are seeking a Principal Security Engineer to join at the earliest stage and ensure security is designed correctly from the start.

This role provides deep adversarial and architectural expertise, identifying how this service could be attacked and guiding how we defend it. You will work as a principal‑level technical peer to engineering, influence early design decisions, drive red‑team style assessments, and serve as a tier‑2 subject‑matter expert in select partner and customer conversations. As one of the first security specialists on the team, you will help establish early security practices and a threat‑modeling culture that will scale as the team grows.

What You’ll Do:

Security Architecture & Threat Modeling

• Analyze our AWS-based cloud infrastructure, APIs, and supporting services to identify realistic attack paths and translate findings into clear defensive priorities.
• Advise engineering leadership on secure design decisions across cloud infrastructure, application logic, and device/key‑management touchpoints early in the development lifecycle.
• Develop and maintain service‑specific threat models and guide an emerging threat‑modeling culture for a small, fast‑moving pre‑launch engineering team.

Adversarial Testing & Red Team Assessments

• Conduct or commission red‑team style assessments spanning network, application, cloud configuration, identity flows, and adjacent supply‑chain vectors.
• Communicate security findings in terms of business impact, driving pragmatic prioritization and informed decision‑

Identity & Access Flow Security

• Evaluate how Iridium’s service integrates into partner identity and access systems (SAML, OIDC, OAuth 2.0, Web Authn, CTAP).
• Identify how these integrations could be attacked, misused, or strengthened, particularly in step‑up authentication and assurance contexts.

Cross‑
Functional & External Influence

• Serve as a tier‑2 security SME in select partner or prospective‑customer conversations where deep technical expertise is required beyond sales engineering capabilities.
• Collaborate closely with engineering, product, and partner‑facing teams to ensure security decisions are incorporated throughout the service architecture.
• Foundational Security Practices & Mentorship
• Help establish early security practices, lightweight processes, and technical standards appropriate for a pre‑launch product environment.
• Provide mentorship and guidance to engineers and future security team members as the capability grows.

What You’ll Need to Succeed:

• 10+ years of experience in network and information security, with demonstrated depth in offensive or adversarial security; red team experience strongly preferred.
• Strong applied expertise in AWS security fundamentals (IAM, VPC…