Red Team Operator (Cyber Resilience)

Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! Our vision is fast technology, fair service, and honest values. All at the tap of a phone, all the time.

We are about giving customers a new way to spend, save and manage their money while taking better care of the planet which has seen us become a multi-award winning bank that now employs over 2800 across five offices in London, Cardiff, Dublin, Southampton, and Manchester. Our journey started in 2014, and since then we have surpassed 3.5 million accounts (and four account types!) with 350,000 business customers. We are a fully licensed UK bank but at the heart, we are a tech first company, enabling our platform to deliver brilliant products.

Our technologists are at the very heart of Starling and enjoy working in a fast-paced environment that is all about building things, creating new stuff, and disruptive technology that keeps us on the cutting edge of fintech. We operate a flat structure to empower you to make decisions regardless of what your primary responsibilities may be, innovation and collaboration will be at the core of everything you do. Help is never far away in our open culture, you will find support in your team and from across the business, we are in this together!

The way to thrive and shine within Starling is to be a self-driven individual and be able to take full ownership of everything around you: From building things, designing, discovering, to sharing knowledge with your colleagues and making sure all processes are efficient and productive to deliver the best possible results for our customers. Our purpose is underpinned by five Starling values: Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim For Greatness.

Hybrid Working

We have a Hybrid approach to working here at Starling – our preference is that you\’re located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we\’re able to interact and collaborate in person. In Technology, we\’re asking that you attend the office a minimum of 1 day per week.

Here at Starling we are growing, and our first line Technology Risk (ITRM) Team is looking for an experienced, and talented Red Team Senior Operator to join our Cyber Resilience team to join our efforts in proactively identifying vulnerabilities within our systems and digital infrastructure to ensure continuous improvement in Starling’s resilience.

Reporting to the Technology Risk Adversarial & Cyber Resilience Testing Director, you will have responsibility for designing and executing red team operations and cyber resilience testing against Starling Bank. Operations will emulate real threat actors and target cutting edge technology in Starling Bank’s platform as well as ranging across the endpoint estate. You will use emerging threat intelligence to inform and develop effective attacks.

Key Responsibilities include:

Red Team testing

• Support designing and executing red team operations against Starling Bank (including all scoping, planning, payload/infrastructure development, , execution, reporting and workshops)
• Identifying complex vulnerabilities and building exploits
• Continually improving the methodology and capability of the team
• Developing and documenting reusable attack components using realistic TTPs
• Conducting purple team exercises to validate and improve defensive measures by collaborating with the SOC team to enhance detection capabilities
• Assist in translating red team tactics into actionable intelligence for blue team operations
• Assist developing threat models and ‘worst case scenario’ playbooks based on emerging global risks, including APTs, insider threats and supply chain compromise and simulate real-world scenario to evaluate system and organisational resilience

Cyber Resilience Technical Testing

• Assist cyber resilience technical testing initiatives to assess the Bank’s ability to withstand and recover from cyber attacks and system disruptions, including technical simulations and controlled attack scenarios (e.g. ransomware, DDoS, data corruption) to evaluate resilience, incident response capabilities, back up integrity, failover procedures and recovery time objectives.
• Facilitate the identification of vulnerabilities, improvements to defence strategies and aid recovery process validation
• Analyse test results, validate breach scenarios, document findings and provide actionable recommendations to enhance Starling’s overall cyber resilience posture

You will need:

• Experience of working in a red team and understanding of the benefits and pitfalls of different adversarial techniques
• Ability to work to define rules of engagement and to show strong discipline and steady judgement, working both independently or as part of a team
• Experience conducting security testing against cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Relevant security testing certifications (e.g. OSCP, CRTO, OSMR, cloud security or similar)
• Familiarity with the cyber risks faced by Starling Bank and other financial institutions
• Sound network and operating system fundamentals (MacOS, Linux and Windows)
• Familiarity with modern software engineering paradigms (CI/CD, Infra as Code)

The following skills and experience are desirable:

• Experience in Ai/Ml Systems Security, Including LLMs, transformers and model interpretability
• Certification such as OSCE, CCT, OSEP, OSMR or similar
• Prior experience in incident response, threat intelligence, or ethical hacking at an enterprise level
• Background in regulatory environments (e.g. ISO 27001, SOCII, GDPR or AI Act compliance)
• Software engineering expertise (Java, Kotlin, Go…) or reverse engineering expertise
• Experience and enthusiasm for blogging and speaking both internally to educate our staff and potentially externally

Interview process:

Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you! Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious. In general you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:

• Stage 1 – 45 mins with one of the team
• Stage 2 – 60 mins technical interview with two team members
• Stage 3 – 45 min final with two executives

• 33 days holiday (including public holidays, which you can take when it works best for you)
• An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
• Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off
• 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
• Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
• Life insurance at 4x your salary & group income protection
• Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
• Generous family-friendly policies
• Incentives refer a friend scheme
• Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
• Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing

About us

You may be put off applying for a role because you don\’t tick every box. Forget that! While we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we\’re always open to discussion. So, if you\’re excited about working with us, but aren’t sure if you\’re 100% there yet, get in touch anyway. We’re on a mission to radically reshape banking – and that starts with our brilliant team. Whatever came before, we’re proud to bring together people of all backgrounds and experiences who love working together to solve problems.

Starling Bank is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Starling Bank are considered without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. When you provide us with this information, you are doing so at your own consent, with full knowledge that we will process this personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice.

By submitting your application, you agree that Starling Bank may collect your personal data for recruiting and related purposes. Our Privacy Notice explains what personal information we may process, where we may process your personal information, its purposes for processing your personal information, and the rights you can exercise over our use of your personal information.

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