Cyber Security Engineer (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds & London) London

As a Cyber Security Engineer at Genomics England, working within the Cyber Security team, you will operate at the intersection of cyber defence, threat analysis, and security engineering, protecting one of the UK’s most sensitive technology and data environments at national scale.

Your primary focus will be on detecting, analysing, and responding to cyber threats, while improving the controls, tooling, and processes that enable effective security operations. Working closely with Platform Engineers, Cloud Engineers, and Architects, you will help ensure security controls are observable, resilient, and effective by design. This includes enhancing security monitoring and alerting capabilities, improving detection logic, and supporting incident response through technical investigation and root cause analysis.

A significant part of the role involves hands‑on cyber defence, including security event analysis, threat hunting, and incident response. You will work with logs and telemetry across cloud, platform, and application layers to identify genuine threats and support timely, effective response actions. You will also apply engineering principles to security challenges by automating workflows, integrating security tooling into engineering processes, and improving operational efficiency through scripting and configuration‑as‑code approaches.

Skills and Experience for Success

• Hands‑on experience monitoring, detecting, analysing, investigating, and responding to cyber security threats.
• Strong understanding of cyber security operations and incident response, including root cause analysis and post‑incident review activities.
• Experience working with SIEM and SOAR platforms, including alert analysis, detection tuning, and response automation.
• Experience performing threat hunting and integrating threat intelligence into operational security activities.
• Practical experience with cloud security concepts and services, particularly within AWS environments, including logging, telemetry, native security controls, and common attack patterns.
• Experience improving security operations through automation, and configuration‑as‑code approaches.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure‑as‑Code and CI/CD tooling (e.g. Terraform, GitLab CI/CD, or equivalent), with the ability to review and influence security controls within engineering workflows.
• Experience working within DevOps or squad‑based delivery environments, collaborating closely with engineers and architects.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain security issues clearly to both technical and non‑technical audiences, particularly during incidents.

Qualifications

Qualifications are not essential, but relevant cyber security, cloud security, or incident response certifications may be beneficial. Practical, real‑world experience in cyber security analysis, threat detection, and incident response, combined with strong engineering and automation capability, is considered equally valuable.

Additional Information

• Salary: From £78,850
• Closing Date: Sunday 12th July at 23:00 (UK time)

Benefits

• Generous Leave: 30 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, plus additional leave for long service, and also the option to apply for up to 30 days of remote working abroad annually (approval required).
• Family‑Friendly: Blended working arrangements, flexible working, enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave benefits.
• Pension & Financial: Defined contribution pension (Genomics England double‑matches up to 10%, however you can contribute more if you wish), Life Assurance (3x salary), an Electric Vehicle salary sacrifice scheme and a Give As You Earn scheme.
• Learning & Development: Individual learning budgets, support for training and certifications, and reimbursement for one annual professional subscription (approval required).
• Recognition & Rewards: Employee recognition programme and referral scheme.
• Health & Wellbeing: Subsidised gym membership, a free Headspace account, and access to an Employee Assistance Programme, eye tests, flu jabs.

Equal Opportunities

Genomics England is actively committed to providing and supporting an inclusive environment that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion best practice both within our community and in any other area where we have influence. We are proud of our diverse community where everyone can come to work and feel welcomed and treated with respect regardless of any disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, or social background.

Genomics England’s policies of non‑discrimination and equity will be applied fairly to all people, regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, being pregnant or recently becoming a parent, race, religion or beliefs, sex or sexual orientation, length of service, whether full or part‑time or employed under a permanent or a fixed‑term contract or any other relevant factor. Genomics England does not tolerate any form of discrimination, harassment, victimisation or bullying at work. Such behaviour undermines our mission and core values and diminishes the dignity, respect and integrity of all parties. Our People policies outline our commitment to inclusivity.

Working Arrangements

Genomics England operates a blended working model. We expect most people to come into the office a minimum of 2 times each month. However, this will vary according to role and will be agreed with your team leader. There is no expectation that people will return to the office full time unless they want to, however, some of our roles require full time on‑site attendance e.g., lab teams, reception team.

Our office locations are: Canary Wharf, Cambridge and Leeds.