Cryptography Architect
Qualtrics · Kraków, Poland · 1mo ago
Staff / Lead / PrincipalOn-siteSoftware Engineering
At Qualtrics, we create software the world’s best brands use to deliver exceptional frontline experiences, build high-performing teams, and design products people love. But we are more than a platform—we are the creators and stewards of the Experience Management category serving over 18K clients globally. Building a category takes grit, determination, and a disdain for convention—but most of all it requires close-knit, high-functioning teams with an unwavering dedication to serving our customers.
When you join one of our teams, you’ll be part of a nimble group that’s empowered to set aggressive goals and move fast to achieve them. Strategic risks are encouraged and complex problems are solved together, by passing the microphone and iterating until the best solution comes to light. You won’t have to look to find growth opportunities—ready or not, they’ll find you. From retail to government to healthcare, we’re on a mission to bring humanity, connection, and empathy back to business. Join over 5,000 people across the globe who think that’s work worth doing.
When you join one of our teams, you’ll be part of a nimble group that’s empowered to set aggressive goals and move fast to achieve them. Strategic risks are encouraged and complex problems are solved together, by passing the microphone and iterating until the best solution comes to light. You won’t have to look to find growth opportunities—ready or not, they’ll find you. From retail to government to healthcare, we’re on a mission to bring humanity, connection, and empathy back to business. Join over 5,000 people across the globe who think that’s work worth doing.
Cryptography Architect
Why We Have This Role
Cryptography is the foundation that confidentiality, integrity, and trust in our systems rest on — and that foundation faces real pressure: weak or misused algorithms, poor key management, protocol vulnerabilities, and the looming migration to post-quantum cryptography. The Cryptography Architect leads the design and implementation of cryptographic frameworks that protect our systems and data —building resilience against these threats and earning our customers' trust.
How You’ll Find Success- Strategic Visionary: You hold a holistic view of the cryptographic threat landscape — from classical attacks to the shift toward post-quantum cryptography — proactively identifying and mitigating emerging risks. You guide cryptographic architecture strategy so it aligns with the organization’s risk posture and business goals.
- Technical Innovator: Your drive for continuous improvement pushes you to explore and implement cutting-edge cryptographic practices — post-quantum algorithms, key management modernization, secure protocol design — keeping our systems resilient against evolving threats.
- Collaborative Leader: You build partnerships across security, engineering, and data science, promoting best practices in cryptography. Your ability to foster collaboration creates an informed, cohesive environment dedicated to protecting our systems.
- Resilient and Adaptive: You thrive in a fast-paced environment, managing complex projects while guiding cross-functional teams through shifts in cryptographic standards or technology. Your problem-solving skills are essential to navigating the complexities of cryptographic governance.
- Shape Industry Standards: Participate in industry conferences, standards bodies such as NIST and IETF, and professional organizations to influence the future of cryptography and key management practices.
- Executive Presence: Increase your visibility and involvement in executive-level discussions, refining how you communicate strategic security insights.
- Expand Your Leadership Toolkit: As a thought leader in cryptography architecture, mentor and coach emerging talent, growing the cryptographic expertise across the organization.
- Complex Problem-Solving: Tackle significant cryptography challenges that sharpen your analytical, critical thinking, and strategic planning abilities.
- Drive Innovation in Cryptography: Lead research, evaluation, and implementation of next-generation cryptographic technologies and methodologies — post-quantum algorithms, modern key management, secure protocol design — that support our products and platforms.
- Conduct Security Reviews: Perform security reviews of cryptographic implementations and proposed designs, including key management systems, protocols, and cryptographic integrations across products, identifying risks such as weak or deprecated algorithms, improper key handling, and protocol vulnerabilities.
- Lead Key Management Architecture: Own the strategy and architecture for key management across the organization — key generation, distribution, rotation, escrow, and destruction — including KMS/HSM integration, envelope encryption, and secrets management, ensuring the full key lifecycle is designed and operated to withstand compromise.
- Develop Standards & Reference Architectures: Author cryptography-related technical security standards, guardrails, and reference architectures — encryption standards, key management standards, PKI architecture — grounded in industry-wide frameworks such as NIST SP 800-57, FIPS 140-3, and NIST’s post-quantum cryptography standards, giving product and engineering teams a secure, repeatable blueprint for building and deploying cryptographic solutions.
- Shape Security Strategy: Develop a comprehensive cryptography strategy that aligns with the organization’s risk profile and business objectives.
- Manage Complex Projects: Oversee execution of large-scale cryptography initiatives — such as PKI modernization or post-quantum migration — ensuring on-time, on-budget delivery while proactively addressing risks and fostering adaptability within teams.
- Foster a Culture of Excellence: Create an environment that promotes knowledge sharing, collaboration, and continuous learning. Mentor colleagues to build a high-performing team committed to our security objectives.
While we value the wealth of experience, we put more emphasis on your capability and the outcomes you’ve produced. For this role, these elements are particularly important:
What You Should Know About This Team
- Extensive Architectural Expertise: 5+ years of experience in cryptography, security architecture, or a related field, with a proven history of designing secure cryptographic architectures; capable of leading strategic initiatives to strengthen security posture.
- Technical Expertise: Strong understanding of cryptographic primitives and protocols — symmetric and asymmetric encryption, hashing, digital signatures, TLS/PKI. Deep, hands-on knowledge of key management (generation, rotation, escrow, destruction, KMS/HSM integration) and fluency in industry-wide standards and frameworks, including NIST SP 800-57, FIPS 140-2/140-3, and NIST’s post-quantum cryptography standards.
- Demonstrated Initiative Leadership: Proven experience leading large-scale cryptography initiatives, coordinating cross-functional teams to align with security guidelines while driving operational efficiency and business growth.
- Strategic Mindset: Ability to translate cryptography challenges into actionable solutions that integrate with business objectives and risk management frameworks.
- Collaboration & Communication Skills: Excellent communication abilities to engage effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, fostering constructive partnerships across the organization.
- Our teams emphasizes technical craftsmanship, collaboration across languages and domains, and continuous improvement.
- You’ll join a culture committed to innovation, mentorship, and shared ownership with a strong focus on quality and reliability.
- We partner closely with product, infrastructure, and data science teams to solve challenging problems at large scale.
- Opportunities to lead initiatives that influence company technical strategy and operational maturity.
Our Team’s Favorite Perks and Benefits
- Annual Leave: 20 or 26 annual leave days per annum plus an additional day for each year of service (to a max of 5).
- Private Medical Insurance- Luxmed health & dental cover for you and your dependants.
- Commuter Assistance- Up to the value of 80 PLN net a month for public transport.
- Savings Plan- Two company saving plans provided by Nationale Nederlanden: Employee Capital Plan (PPK) & Employee Saving Plan (PPO),
- QED PROGRAM- Qualtrics Engineer Development (QED) program: support, engineering learning activities up to 10% of engineering work time each quarter.
- Wellness- Up to the value of 800PLN gross per quarter can be reimbursed for a variety of wellness activities via our dedicated platform Forma,
- A choice of Multispot cards available.
- Our employee assistance program with Unum provides counselling and wellbeing support to all employees
- Experience bonus- 7000 PLN gross per annum. Qualtrics experience bonus is a program designed to provide experiences to our employees they might not otherwise have.
- Group Life & Income Protection Insurance
- Glasses/Contact lenses Reimbursement
- Free breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and drinks for everyone in the office
- Tax-deductible expenses (up to 50% depending on role)
The Qualtrics Hybrid Work Model: Our hybrid work model is elegantly simple: we all gather in the office three days a week; Mondays and Thursdays, plus one day selected by your organizational leader. These purposeful in-person days in thoughtfully designed offices help us do our best work and harness the power of collaboration and innovation. For the rest of the week, work where you want, owning the integration of work and life. #hybrid
Qualtrics is an equal opportunity employer meaning that all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected characteristic.
Applicants in the United States of America have rights under Federal Employment Laws:Family & Medical Leave Act,Equal Opportunity Employment,Employee Polygraph Protection Act
Qualtrics is committed to the inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Qualtrics will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please let your Qualtrics contact/recruiter know.
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