Principal Security Architect

Department/Team Purpose: 

Copper provides institutional digital asset custody, settlement, and collateral management services across a wide range of blockchains and integrated venues. Information Security protects the firm's platforms, client assets, and regulated entities across the group.

Role Purpose: 

The Principal Security Architect is the senior technical authority for security architecture at Copper. The role reports to the CISO and partners closely with Engineering. The holder sets architectural direction, reviews and approves designs for major change, and acts as the firm's reference point on the security of the systems, protocols, and integrations Copper depends on. The role is predominantly architecture and assurance, with limited hands-on solution design in the cloud and integration space where reference patterns are needed.

Key Responsibilities:  

Architectural authority

• Hold formal security sign-off authority for major changes to Copper's platforms, infrastructure, and integrations.
• Shape and maintain the security architecture patterns, principles, and reference designs that engineering teams build against.
• Provide the senior technical security position in architectural and business decisions, including escalations where security and delivery pressures conflict.

Custody, signing, and cryptographic architecture

• Provide architectural security leadership over Copper's signing infrastructure, working alongside specialist engineering and cryptography teams. Scope covers the people, process, and operational design around MPC-based signing. Solid conceptual grounding in threshold cryptography and signature schemes is required; cryptographer-level work is not.
• Review and approve changes to transaction construction, signing flows, approval policy, and key lifecycle operations.
• Provide architectural assurance over chain-of-trust constructs adjacent to custody, including verifiable build pipelines, hardware-backed code signing, and authenticator-bound administrative paths.

Multi-chain and integration security

• Reason at architectural depth across the range of blockchains Copper supports, including EVM, UTXO, and account-based non-EVM families. This requires a working understanding of transaction construction, signing semantics, consensus assumptions, and validator and staking models across these environments, without being a protocol engineer in any of them.
• Assess third-party smart contract architectures, implementations, and audit reports to a level sufficient to understand the exploit and risk surface, without performing line-by-line code review.

Settlement, collateral, and off-exchange architecture

• Provide architectural ownership of the security model for Copper's settlement, collateral mirroring, and off-exchange product surfaces.
• Reason about the trust boundaries between Copper, venues, and clients, and ensure architectural controls match the obligations each side carries.

Identity and access architecture

• Own identity and access architecture as a dedicated pillar of the role.
• Set patterns for workforce, workload, and third-party identity across Entra ID, federated SSO, OAuth2 / OIDC, SAML, and modern authenticators.
• Govern entitlement design, privileged access, and access models for contractors, vendors, and external operators.

Cloud and platform security

• Maintain working architectural fluency in both AWS and Azure, including network topology, segmentation, secrets handling, and platform telemetry.
• Produce reference patterns and, where needed, direct integration designs in the cloud and platform space.

Third-party and protocol risk

• Lead technical security review of vendors, integrated venues, and protocols, including challenge of assurances that do not stand up to scrutiny.
• Support client and counterparty due diligence on the technical content most likely to be misrepresented or under-specified.

Policy, regulatory, and assurance support

• Maintain a working understanding of the regulatory regimes applicable to Copper's licensed entities sufficient to translate architectural decisions into language Compliance and GRC can defend. Primary ownership of regulatory positioning sits elsewhere. 

Skills and Experience: 

Essential  

• Multi-chain architectural literacy. Able to reason across EVM, UTXO, and non-EVM account-based chains at the level of transaction construction, signing, consensus, and validator models. Comfortable assessing third-party smart contract designs, implementations, and audit reports for exploit and risk surface without performing code review.
• Custody and signing architecture. Strong conceptual grasp of threshold signing, signature schemes, and key lifecycle. Able to design and challenge the operational architecture around signing, separation of duties, approval policy, key ceremony equivalents in MPC, and recovery, to a high standard.
• Settlement and collateral architecture. Demonstrable experience reasoning about settlement, collateral, and off-exchange constructs, including trust boundaries between custodians, venues, and clients.

Desirable  

• Familiarity with chain-of-trust constructs including verifiable builds, reproducible build pipelines, and hardware-backed code signing.

Why Copper?  

At Copper, we keep innovation, openness, and curiosity at the centre of everything we do. Here, bold ideas get the spotlight, learning is constant, and diversity shapes our team from the ground up.

Jump into a fast-moving, dynamic team that loves a challenge and knows how to have fun along the way. Collaboration is just as important as results—you’ll be surrounded by smart, driven colleagues in London and across our APAC, Switzerland, UAE, and US offices.

Hybrid working model – we believe in the value of bringing people together and at the same time we embrace the adaptability of flexibly working.

Diversity and inclusion matter to us – they’re woven into Copper life. From employee-led groups like Women at Copper to a committee focused on community and wellbeing, you’ll have a network that supports you from day one. Everyone voice matters.

If you’re looking to ramp up your career, or keen to do something new in your field, with us, you’ll keep moving forward.

Ready to make your mark, keep growing, and join a supportive, dynamic team? Copper’s the place.

The interview process at Copper  

Our interview process is designed to be thoughtful, efficient, and engaging. While specific steps may vary slightly depending on the role, the typical journey includes:

1. Initial Screening A brief conversation with our Talent Acquisition team to explore your background, motivations, and alignment with the role.
2. Technical Interview A virtual session conducted via Microsoft Teams, where you'll engage with team members to discuss relevant skills, problem-solving approaches, and technical experience.
3. In-Person Interview A conversation focused on team dynamics, collaboration style, and any final technical questions. This may be with cross-functional peers or leadership.

Additional steps may be added based on the role's complexity or seniority. We aim to keep the process transparent and respectful of your time.

Benefits 

In return for everything you can bring to Copper, we can offer you an exciting, challenging role in a fast-growing and dynamic business, with career opportunities and welcoming working environment. Some of our key UK benefits are highlighted below: 

• Paid Time Off - A minimum of 35 days of paid time off per year, inclusive of annual leave and public holidays. Employees also receive one additional day of annual leave for each year of service.
• Comprehensive Medical Insurance - Inclusive of dental, optical, audiology, and mental health coverage, with medical history disregarded
• Life Insurance
• Enhanced Pension Contributions - Includes an enhanced employer matching contribution
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

If you think you have everything we're looking for and more, then we'd love you to apply for the opportunity.