Principal Security Architect in London

Since being founded in 2018, Copper has been building the standard for institutional digital asset infrastructure with a focus on custody, collateral management, and prime services. Led by Amar Kuchinad, Copper's Global CEO, the firm provides a comprehensive suite of custody, trading and settlement solutions that reduce counterparty risk and bring greater capital and operational efficiency to digital asset markets. At the heart of Copper's offering is Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology – the gold standard in secure custody.

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.
• Custody, signing, and cryptographic architecture: Provide architectural security leadership over Copper's signing infrastructure, working alongside specialist engineering and cryptography teams.
• 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.
• Settlement, collateral, and off-exchange architecture: Provide architectural ownership of the security model for Copper's settlement, collateral mirroring, and off-exchange product surfaces.
• Identity and access architecture: Own identity and access architecture as a dedicated pillar of the role.
• Cloud and platform security: Maintain working architectural fluency in both AWS and Azure, including network topology, segmentation, secrets handling, and platform telemetry.
• Third-party and protocol risk: Lead technical security review of vendors, integrated venues, and protocols.
• Policy, regulatory, and assurance support: Maintain a working understanding of the regulatory regimes applicable to Copper's licensed entities.

Skills and Experience:

Essential:

• Multi-chain architectural literacy.
• Custody and signing architecture.
• Settlement and collateral architecture.
• Identity and access architecture.
• Cloud security.
• Architectural authority and judgement.
• Change review and assurance.
• Communication.

Desirable:

• Familiarity with chain-of-trust constructs.
• Awareness of the regulatory landscape relevant to digital asset custody and trading.
• Compliance familiarity across ISO 27001, SOC 2, and NIST CSF / 800-53.
• Enterprise architecture grounding (TOGAF, SABSA).

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.

The interview process at Copper:

• Initial Screening: A brief conversation with our Talent Acquisition team.
• Technical Interview: A virtual session conducted via Microsoft Teams.
• In-Person Interview: A conversation focused on team dynamics, collaboration style, and any final technical questions.

Benefits:

• Paid Time Off - A minimum of 35 days of paid time off per year.
• Comprehensive Medical Insurance.
• Life Insurance.
• Enhanced Pension Contributions.
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).

Copper is an equal opportunity employer. We embrace diversity and equal opportunities in a serious way. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills.