IoT & Connected Devices Security Architect

Position Details

The Information Security team protects all of Grainger, from our systems to our data across the global company. Our infrastructure is powered by cloud, on-premises, and SaaS platforms that keep Grainger, and our customers, working. We use modern tools and practices to stay ahead of evolving security challenges. 

The mission of the Security Architecture team is to be the strategic security design partner for Grainger’s technology systems. This role owns the security architecture for Grainger’s IoT and connected devices, including KeepStock vending platforms at customer sites across North America, AI-enabled vending systems using edge computer vision, and the cloud, web, and identity services that support them. 

In this senior role, you will establish consistent fleet security baselines and build security into the multi-year product roadmap and rationalized platform set. The role pairs deep IoT and embedded expertise with broad security architecture across cloud, web applications and APIs, identity, and endpoint security. Success requires understanding customer environments, business priorities, and field operations well enough to align stakeholders on risk, cost, reliability, and customer experience. 

In this individual contributor role, you will report to the Director of Cybersecurity Architecture and may be based remotely or at our offices in the Chicago area. 

You will

• Own security architecture and posture across device fleets, edge platforms, and supporting cloud, web, and identity services, and lead platform rationalization into a consistent target state 

• Partner with senior business, product, engineering, operations, and security stakeholders to align priorities, translating business context into security requirements, security risk into business impact, and decisions into actionable engineering direction 

• Serve as the security design authority for connected systems in Grainger’s architecture governance process, engaging early enough to shape hardware, platform, and vendor decisions 

• Lead security architecture for the cloud platforms, web applications, and APIs that manage the fleet, including cloud IAM, web application firewalls, API protection, and secrets management, partnering with domain architects to reach the target state 

• Lead threat modeling across devices, edge platforms, connectivity, cloud services, web applications and APIs, and field workflows, including physical tampering, device cloning, and unattended operation 

• Define measurable security baselines for field devices on commercial and embedded operating systems, tailored to device capability and risk, covering hardening, secure boot, disk encryption, and endpoint detection and response 

• Establish secure delivery patterns for edge software and AI models, including signing, provenance, staged rollout, rollback, and software and model bills of materials 

• Secure edge AI models and inference, balancing security, privacy, latency, cost, and customer experience in placement decisions 

• Create device trust architectures covering unique identities, secure onboarding, PKI, certificate lifecycle, secrets protection, mutual authentication, and least-privilege device messaging 

• Design identity and access patterns for devices, services, technicians, administrators, vendors, and customers, including federation, privileged access, and auditable device-specific authorization 

• Architect secure connectivity across cellular, satellite, Wi-Fi, and wired deployments, including carrier strategy, failover, and isolation from customer networks 

• Shape endpoint and fleet telemetry, vulnerability management, compromised-device containment, and recovery with engineering and security operations teams 

• Communicate security posture to leadership through metrics and KPIs, and mentor peers and junior architects through design reviews 

You have

• Deep security architecture expertise in large-scale IoT, embedded, or edge systems, plus broad enterprise architecture experience, owning strategy and target state rather than firmware or platform administration 

• 10+ years in information security or related engineering, including 8+ years in security architecture across multiple domains, with at least 4 years focused on IoT, embedded, or edge systems 

• Preferred: experience in connected retail, industrial IoT, robotics, or comparable edge devices, and certifications such as CISSP, CCSP, or relevant cloud, Linux, or industrial cybersecurity credentials 

• Proven ability to align senior stakeholders behind multi-year direction and to rationalize overlapping or acquired technology portfolios through capability mapping and migration strategy 

• Strong experience with cloud-connected IoT and network architectures, including edge runtimes, MQTT, messaging authorization, segmentation from customer environments, and cellular, satellite, Wi-Fi, and wired connectivity 

• Solid cloud, application, and identity architecture experience, including cloud IAM, web application firewalls, API gateways, secrets management, federation, MFA, and privileged access management 

• Expert understanding of device trust and device-scale PKI, including hardware roots of trust (TPM, secure elements, HSMs), secure and measured boot, attestation, certificate rotation and revocation, and how they fail 

• Experience hardening commercial and embedded operating systems to IoT security standards, including endpoint detection and response, vulnerability management, and secure OTA updates with signing and rollback protection 

• Experience defining fleet security telemetry, containment, and recovery patterns, and turning incident findings into architecture improvements 

• Working knowledge of edge computer vision security, including model protection, adversarial inputs, MLOps across edge and cloud, and privacy obligations for camera and sensor data 

• Strong communication skills, including the ability to translate technical concepts for executives and defend architectural positions with evidence