Director of Cyber Security in London

Company Overview

We’re Checkout.com – you might not know our name, but companies like eBay, ASOS, Klarna, Uber Eats, and Sony do. That moment when you check out online? We make it happen. Checkout.com is where the world checks out. Our global network powers billions of transactions every year, making money move without making a fuss. We spent years perfecting a service most people will never notice. Because when digital payments just work, businesses grow, customers stay, and no one stops to think about why. With 19 offices spanning six continents, we feel at home everywhere – but London is our HQ. Wherever our people work their magic, they’re fast‑moving, performance‑obsessed, and driven by being better every day. Ideal. Because a role here isn’t just another job; it’s a career‑defining opportunity to build the future of fintech.

Job Description

You are accountable for the organisation’s overall exposure to and resilience against real‑world cyber threats. As Director of Cyber Security, you own the cyber defence strategy, security architecture, and technical direction of the organisation. This role defines how we anticipate threats, detect hostile activity, contain incidents, and recover with minimal impact to customers, revenue, and trust. You sit alongside Security Operations, with a clear mandate to progressively absorb higher‑value operational ownership into Cyber Security. Over time, this role becomes the centre of gravity for detection engineering, incident response, and threat‑driven defence. When major incidents occur, you are the technical authority. You make decisions under uncertainty, set priorities, and advise executives on real risk and trade‑offs. When incidents do not occur, it is because the systems, standards, and teams you built are doing their job. This is a hands‑on leadership role. You will design, build, and enforce modern cyber defence capabilities, not just describe them.

Responsibilities

• Owning the end‑to‑end Cyber Security strategy, architecture, and operating model
• Defining how the organisation anticipates, detects, responds to, and recovers from cyber threats
• Acting as the senior technical decision‑maker during high‑severity security incidents
• Owning adversary‑focused defence, including threat modelling, detection engineering, and threat hunting strategy
• Designing and enforcing runbooks, escalation models, and incident response playbooks
• Setting security standards and having authority to block or elevate high‑risk architectural decisions
• Building and scaling Cyber Security capabilities, including Detection Engineering and Threat Hunting, Incident Response, Cyber Security Engineering
• Driving measurable improvements in impact‑focused outcomes such as time to containment, blast‑radius reduction, and recovery effectiveness
• Ensuring post‑incident learnings result in concrete architectural, control, and process changes
• Progressively absorbing operational ownership where it materially improves security outcomes
• Partnering with IT, Cloud, Engineering, Legal, Risk, and Executive leadership to make informed risk decisions

Qualifications

• Proven experience owning and scaling cyber security functions in complex environments
• Deep background in incident response, detection engineering, and threat‑informed defence
• Experience designing security operating models and evolving teams as ownership shifts
• Demonstrated authority during incidents, including advising executives on high‑impact decisions
• Ability to operate strategically while remaining hands‑on when stakes are high
• Experience enforcing security standards in fast‑moving engineering environments
• Background in regulated, high‑growth organisations where failure is not theoretical
• Strong cloud‑first security architecture experience
• Track record of modernising legacy detection and response approaches into adversary‑focused defence
• Comfortable being accountable for outcomes, not just activity

Benefits & Working Model

Hybrid working model offers flexibility, with three days per week in the office to support collaboration and connection.