About the role As a Senior Security Engineer in Tesco’s Innovation Engineering team, you will pioneer next generation security capabilities that proactively protect a retail ecosystem serving millions of customers. You will combine deep engineering expertise with an innovation mindset to build production-grade solutions that leverage applied Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation, and modern development practices to strengthen Tesco’s cyber defence. This role sits at the point where ideas become real: you will design, build, test, and operationalise capabilities that measurably reduce risk and improve resilience. You will also act as a technical leader, setting engineering direction, raising standards, and influencing across diverse security and technology teams with a customer-first focus. In the immediate term, you will focus on the needs of our Cyber Threat Intelligence and Detection Engineering teams. This team operates as an innovation incubator for cyber defence capabilities: rapidly exploring ideas, validating them through prototypes and experiments, and ensuring the strongest concepts graduate into secure, reliable production services. Depending on the nature of the capability, ownership may either remain within this team or transition to the most appropriate long-term service owner once the solution is proven and operationally ready. You will work closely with our Security Automation Engineering team to build a shared roadmap of opportunities to deliver across Cyber Defence, ensuring we build and/or buy the best technologies to deliver our vision. You will be responsible for Architect and deliver innovative security capabilities: Design and build high impact security solutions that improve Tesco’s defensive posture, from concept through to production operation, with measurable outcomes. Embed AI augmented security engineering: Apply AI and automation to accelerate and improve security outcomes (e.g., enrichment, reasoning support, detection ideation and improvement, general engineering productivity), ensuring solutions remain safe, explainable, and fit for operational use. Lead modern engineering approaches for cyber defence: Use contemporary software development practices to turn ideas into secure, production-ready capabilities, with a focus on automation, experimentation, maintainability, and scale. Champion engineering excellence: Establish secure, test-driven approaches, code quality standards, automated testing, version control discipline, and repeatable release patterns to ensure innovation is reliable and maintainable. Share knowledge and inspire others: Showcase your work, build understanding, and foster excitement around the solutions you develop so innovation can scale beyond the team. Validate effectiveness and resilience: Design evaluation strategies and functionality testing so controls work as intended, regressions are prevented, and defensive improvements are demonstrable over time. Influence and enable change across teams: Collaborate with security and technology stakeholders to drive adoption of new capabilities, communicate trade offs clearly, and create inclusive ways of working that help teams succeed. You will need Essential Skills Demonstrable expertise in applied AI for cyber defence, including identifying high value use cases, translating them into engineering work, and delivering outcomes safely with human accountability and appropriate guardrails. Exposure to technical AI architecture
Senior Security Innovation Engineer employer: Tesco Technology
At Tesco Technology, we pride ourselves on being an excellent employer that fosters a collaborative and innovative work culture. Our commitment to employee growth is evident through tailored development programmes and opportunities to lead impactful projects in a dynamic environment. Located at the heart of our operations, this role offers unique advantages such as access to cutting-edge technology and the chance to shape pricing strategies that drive real business value.
