Director of Security Engineering & Operations in London

At Cognism, the security of our data, our systems and our clients’ systems is a business priority. Information security is embedded in the way we work, and we are driving a culture where the fastest path is the securest path.

As the function continues to mature, we are now hiring for a Director of Security Engineering & Operations to report directly to our CISO. In this role you will own and drive the technical security strategy for Cognism’s web and data products, as well as our corporate environment.

You will be responsible for designing a security programme that protects our most sensitive assets: our data, our data fusion engine and the logic that powers it. As a trusted partner to our R&D leadership team you will help to define and drive the long-term security engineering maturity roadmap, driving alignment across engineering leaders, product leadership and IT.

This is a rare opportunity to define the technical security vision for a data-intensive product at a moment where AI, scale, and engineering velocity are creating new and exciting challenges. You will shape how Cognism builds securely for the next decade.

• Define and own Cognism’s technical security strategy that seeks to embed security-by-design within our web and data products, our data fusion engine and pipelines, and our corporate landscape.
• Work directly with product and technology leadership as a strategic partner.
• Set and direct a secure SDLC strategy that engineers engage with, coaching and mentoring our application security engineer with running our threat modelling program, embedding security in CI/CD, and iteratively improving our vulnerability management processes.
• Partner with engineering leadership to ensure risk-driven supply chain management across our product.
• Work directly with our Director of IT operations to ensure our corporate security posture is mitigating risk and empowering our employees.

• Partner with our VP of Data Engineering to strengthen the security of our enrichment engine, data pipelines, and warehouse ecosystems.
• Direct a strategy that considers security across the full data stack - from ingestion through to the warehouse.
• Define how Cognism embeds AI securely as LLMs and agentic workflows move deeper into the product.
• Partner with our CISO to shape and implement an AI security posture.

• Own the strategic relationship with our 24/7 outsourced SOC.
• Ensure Cognism has a holistic, well-maintained SIEM.
• Build the internal team into a trusted escalation layer.

• Lead a team of application and infrastructure security engineers.
• Build a security culture where developers raise security questions early.
• Be the security leader Cognism’s engineers want in the room.

• Delivered a unified security engineering roadmap aligned with engineering leadership.
• Matured secure SDLC adoption across Web and Data engineering.
• Improved MTTD/MTTR through stronger SOC operations.
• Invested in and mentored a team with clear ownership, KPIs, and engineering trust.
• Reduced engineering friction by creating pragmatic, developer-friendly guardrails.

• Generous Annual Leave/ Paid Time Off (PTO).
• A day off for your Birthday!
• Great Maternity and Paternity packages.
• Monthly Wellbeing Allowance.
• Access to Spill – our slack integrated Wellbeing Service.

At Cognism, we are committed to fostering an inclusive, diverse, and supportive workplace. We welcome applications from individuals typically underrepresented in tech, so if this role excites you but you’re unsure if you meet every requirement, we encourage you to apply!