About the role
Our digital products, data platforms and global workforce depend on secure, resilient technology. This is a senior, hands-on leadership role at the heart of The Economist Group's cyber-security programme. You will set the direction for security engineering; manage a team of security engineers, cyber analysts and partners; and ensure that complex security initiatives are delivered effectively across the organisation. You will translate business priorities, risk and technology strategy into practical security outcomes protecting customer, subscriber, editorial, commercial and employee data; enabling secure product delivery; and strengthening the Group's ability to detect, respond to and recover from cyber threats.
Responsibilities
Lead people, partners and delivery
•Lead, coach and develop a high-performing security team, setting clear priorities, accountability and development opportunities.
•Own the security engineering roadmap, aligning investment and delivery to the Group's risk appetite, technology strategy and business priorities.
•Plan and deliver cross-functional security projects to agreed outcomes, timescales and budgets.
•Manage security technology and service providers, ensuring effective governance, performance and value.
•Provide concise, meaningful updates on delivery, risk, decisions and outcomes to senior stakeholders.
Shape and deliver security strategy
•Contribute to the Group's cyber-security strategy and translate it into a practical, measurable engineering plan.
•Define and evolve security architecture, standards, guardrails and technical baselines across cloud, applications, endpoints, identity and data.
•Ensure security capabilities are scalable, automated and appropriate for a modern, cloud-first organisation.
•Use emerging threats, technology developments and regulatory expectations to inform priorities and investment.
•Balance security, resilience, usability and speed of delivery, enabling teams to innovate safely without unnecessary friction.
Strengthen security capabilities
•Drive secure software-development practices, including code and dependency scanning, infrastructure-as-code scanning, secrets management and secure CI/CD controls.
•Oversee vulnerability management, ensuring risks are identified, prioritised, owned and remediated in line with agreed service levels.
•Support and test incident-response processes, coordinating technical response when required and ensuring lessons learned lead to measurable improvements.
•Work with teams on security assessments, threat modelling, penetration testing and control reviews, turning findings into practical remediation plans.
•Increase automation across security operations to improve coverage, consistency and response times.
Requirements
•Proven experience leading security engineering, platform engineering, cloud-security or application-security teams.
•A strong record of delivering complex security or technology programmes across multiple teams and stakeholders.
•Experience shaping security strategy and translating it into a clear roadmap and measurable outcomes.
•Strong practical knowledge of AWS security, cloud-native architecture and modern engineering practices.
•Experience with secure CI/CD practices, including CircleCI or comparable platforms.
•Knowledge of application, code, dependency and infrastructure-as-code security scanning.
•Experience with vulnerability management, threat detection and security monitoring.
•A sound understanding of secure architecture, threat modelling, incident response and security-control design.
•Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical risk and decisions to senior business leaders.
•A collaborative, pragmatic approach, with strong judgement and the ability to influence across teams.
•Experience in a digital-media, subscription, data, technology or other customer-facing online business.
•Experience in a Google Workspace and SaaS-heavy environment.
•A degree in Computer Science, Cyber Security, Engineering or a related discipline or equivalent practical experience is desirable.
•Relevant certifications, such as AWS Certified Security – Specialty, CISSP or CISM, are beneficial but not essential.
Working arrangements
The majority of our roles operate on a hybrid working pattern, with 3+ days office attendance required.
Benefits
Our benefits package is designed to support your wellbeing, growth, and work-life balance. It includes a highly competitive pension or 401(k) plan, private health insurance, and 24/7 access to counselling and wellbeing resources through our Employee Assistance Program. We also offer a range of lifestyle benefits, including our Work From Anywhere program, which allows you to work from any location where you have the legal right to do so for up to 25 days per year. In addition, we provide generous annual and parental leave, as well as dedicated days off for volunteering and even for moving home. You will also be given free access to all The Economist content, including an online subscription, our range of apps, podcasts and more.
