Penetration Testing Lead (Cybersecurity)

Location: Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh or London, UK; hybrid working with at least two days per week or 40% of working time in an office.

Salary: £92,701–£119,966 outside London; £107,304–£138,864 in London. Annual performance-related bonus also available.

Company

hirify.global is a major UK financial services organisation transforming its security, data and technology capabilities for 28 million customers.

What you will do

• Shape the penetration testing strategy and lead complex application and infrastructure security assessments.
• Lead, mentor and develop a high-performing team of penetration testers.
• Define and deliver a security testing roadmap covering threat resilience, regulatory, change-driven and continuous assurance testing.
• Advance autonomous security testing in collaboration with Autonomous Vulnerability Research and Harness Engineering teams.
• Communicate security risks, testing outcomes and recommendations to technical practitioners, executives and wider business stakeholders.
• Work with engineering and security teams to prioritise and remediate findings.

Requirements

• Extensive experience leading penetration testing, application security testing or offensive security functions in a large, complex organisation.
• Expertise in complex application, API, cloud, infrastructure and network penetration testing.
• Strong knowledge of penetration testing methodologies, vulnerability discovery, offensive security tooling and attacker tradecraft.
• Experience building and leading high-performing technical teams.
• Strong understanding of enterprise technology, cloud platforms, operating systems, networks, software development practices and security controls.
• Excellent communication skills with technical, non-technical and senior leadership audiences.

Nice to have

• CREST, OSCP, OSCE, OSEP, GIAC, GWAPT, CPTS, CAPE or equivalent offensive security certification.
• Software development, automation or engineering experience with languages such as C#, C++, C, Python, Bash, Java or Rust.
• Experience in financial services or another highly regulated environment.
• Degree or postgraduate qualification in Cyber Security, Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Familiarity with autonomous vulnerability discovery, AI-enabled security testing, frontier model evaluation and fuzzing frameworks.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid working with an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion.
• Pension contribution of up to 15%.
• Annual performance-related bonus and share schemes including free shares.
• 30 days of holiday plus bank holidays.
• Adaptable lifestyle benefits, wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave.