Senior Manager of Security Architecture in Manchester

Anaplan is building a formal security architecture practice, and this role leads it. You will turn security architecture into a deliberate, reusable asset for the company: reference architectures, identity and authorisation patterns, cryptography standards, and AI guardrail designs that become the natural, low-friction path for engineering rather than a checkpoint to work around. This is a people‑leadership role with deep technical scope, reporting to the Director of Product Security.

As Anaplan’s AI capabilities and enterprise footprint grow, consistent and well-reasoned architecture decisions matter more with every product that builds on them. You will own that surface, set the standards engineering builds against, and lead a senior team to make secure‑by‑design the default. Anaplan is not a simple SaaS application. The platform performs highly dimensional, enterprise‑scale modelling with responsive recalculation and strong correctness expectations. The technical surface area includes the legacy Hyperblock engine, the newer Polaris engine, and a growing set of AI‑powered products, including CoModeler for AI‑assisted model building and CoPlanner for conversational, analyst‑style planning support.

AI is expanding both the capability and the attack surface of the platform, which raises the value of getting identity, authorisation, supply‑chain integrity, and guardrails right by design. Security architecture has high leverage here because it sits close to engineering and platform decisions, and the team is small enough that a strong hire shapes the standards rather than inheriting them.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the security architecture practice: define how architecture review works at Anaplan, what gets reviewed, when, by whom, and against which bar.
• Own the reusable patterns: drive security reference architectures, identity and authorisation patterns, cryptography architecture, and AI guardrail design as living standards that engineering adopts by default.
• Set security engineering principles: establish and maintain the standards that shape how the platform is built, and keep them legible and usable for engineers.
• Review the highest‑risk designs: lead architecture and design reviews for major platform and AI changes, early enough to influence them.
• Partner with platform engineering: engage directly on the Hyperblock and Polaris surface and the AI product line so architecture reflects how the platform genuinely works.
• Support compliance by design: ensure security architecture meets the demands of the enterprise and regulated environments Anaplan’s customers operate in.
• Codify decisions into policy‑as‑code: turn architecture decisions into enforceable, version‑controlled guardrails wherever that reduces toil rather than adding it.
• Build and develop the team: hire, coach, calibrate, and mentor the architecture team, and hold a consistent technical bar.

Qualifications:

• Experience aligning architecture to enterprise and regulated environments.
• People‑leadership judgement: hiring, coaching, calibrating a senior team, and making hard calls on performance.
• A clear, non‑hyped view of how AI changes the architecture surface: identity, authorisation, supply‑chain integrity, and the need for guardrails.
• Enough hands‑on depth to challenge weak designs on their merits; this is a security leader who stays technically credible, not purely managerial.
• A track record building or leading security architecture in a SaaS or cloud‑first environment, with scope across multiple teams.
• Deep architecture credibility: identity and authorisation, cryptography, secure‑by‑design, and threat modelling at scale.
• Hands‑on experience with policy‑as‑code and turning standards into enforced controls.
• Working familiarity with AI security standards and references such as the NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, MITRE ATLAS, or the OWASP LLM Top 10.
• Contributions to security standards, frameworks, or industry practice.