Director of Engineering (AI Agent Security)

Location: Hybrid working from Belfast, United Kingdom

Salary: £120,000–£200,000 per annum

Company

Global identity, payments, and data security company building a trusted foundation for AI agent identity, authority, execution, and assurance for governments, banks, and enterprises.

What you will do

• Lead the R&D organisation building a platform for securing AI agents across identity, authority, execution, and assurance.
• Define the development strategy, organisational design, delivery model, technical roadmap, funded plans, measurable outcomes, and release commitments.
• Own delivery predictability, quality, reliability, security, cost, engineering productivity, dependency management, design review, testing, and release readiness.
• Guide development of cloud-native services, APIs, SDKs, authorisation components, and tamper-evident evidence systems.
• Embed secure development, threat modelling, privacy, observability, third-party assurance, SLOs, incident response, and root-cause analysis.
• Hire, lead, and develop an inclusive engineering organisation while communicating risks, trade-offs, dependencies, and progress to executive and cross-functional stakeholders.

Requirements

• 20+ years of software development experience, including 10+ years leading engineering managers or multiple teams.
• Track record of delivering enterprise-grade cloud or security products from concept through production and operation.
• Strong knowledge of distributed systems, APIs, cloud platforms, secure development, and DevSecOps.
• Experience leading products with demanding security, privacy, availability, or regulatory requirements.
• Ability to influence senior leaders, resolve cross-functional conflict, and make clear decisions in ambiguity.
• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to have

• Experience with identity, PKI, cryptography, authorisation, policy engines, workload identity, or zero-trust architectures.
• Experience building AI, agentic AI, LLM, MCP, or machine-to-machine platforms.
• Delivery under assurance regimes such as FIPS 140-3, Common Criteria, SOC 2, FedRAMP, or eIDAS.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid working from Belfast.
• Opportunity to build and shape a new engineering organisation from the ground up.
• Competitive executive package and comprehensive benefits package.
• Generous annual leave.
• Backing and scale of a global security leader.

Hiring process

• Apply through a confidential conversation with Phil Gamble or connect with Phil via LinkedIn or WhatsApp.