Senior Cyber Security Engineer (12 month FTC) in Portsmouth

We’re VIVID! – We offer a vibrant, friendly, inclusive culture that supports, develops and attracts the best people! We’re recruiting for a Senior Cyber Security Engineer to join our team in Portsmouth. This is a 12-month fixed term contract opportunity, working 37 hours a week, with a minimum of 20% of this to be office based to promote collaboration and team working within the CIDO team and other colleagues across the business.

Want to know what we can offer you?

• 27 days holiday (plus bank holidays) pro rata, with the opportunity to buy or sell annual leave
• A productivity-related bonus scheme to enhance your take-home
• A generous contributory pension of 6%. We’ll match employee contributions between 7% and 10%
• Life assurance paid at x 3 annual salary
• Private medical insurance
• Health care cash plan called Medicash
• Enhanced pay for maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave
• Access to counselling, legal and financial information
• Electric car scheme
• Huge variety of in-house & e-learning courses and a range of coaching and mentoring programmes

Here’s the facts about the role: As Senior Cyber Security Engineer you’ll play a critical role in protecting VIVID's data and IT infrastructure. Reporting to the Cyber Security Manager, you’ll act as a technical expert and trusted advisor, leading on security operations, risk management, and incident response. The role offers the opportunity to shape and enhance security practices across the organisation, ensuring systems, networks, and data remain resilient against evolving cyber threats.

In this role, you will take ownership of monitoring and responding to security threats, conducting risk assessments, and implementing robust security controls. You will design and maintain secure architectures, develop and enforce cyber security policies, and ensure all systems and projects adopt a security-first approach. Working closely with IT and other teams across the organisation, you’ll promote cyber awareness, contribute to employee training initiatives, and manage security incidents through to resolution. You will also collaborate with external stakeholders, proactively manage vulnerabilities, and ensure systems are regularly patched and compliant with industry standards.

A key focus of the role is continuous improvement and innovation, in line with VIVID's values. You’ll stay ahead of emerging threats and technologies, recommending and implementing new solutions to strengthen security posture. Responsibilities include conducting audits, supporting compliance and accreditation activities, managing supplier security risk (including cloud services), and contributing to the organisation’s cyber security roadmap. You will also play an important role in strengthening disaster recovery capabilities, ensuring systems can be restored effectively and within agreed targets, and embedding security best practices across the wider IT function.

The successful candidate will have proven experience in a similar role and strong user awareness and education. You’ll have experience implementing service improvements and an understanding of how to manage IT risks with cloud suppliers. You’ll have hands-on experience with SIEM tools or managed SOC services, building and maintaining security systems, and working with technologies such as intrusion detection, firewalls, anti-virus, authentication systems, and log management. You will demonstrate a solid knowledge and understanding of IT security, SIEM/SOC environments, Microsoft 365, Azure, Microsoft Defender, and cloud technologies. In addition, you will possess excellent skills in using technology to improve processes, strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, and the confidence to build effective stakeholder relationships while communicating complex security concepts clearly to a range of audiences.

Please refer to the job spec and the person specification within this for the full criteria. Interviews are due to take place 4 and 6 August (subject to change).

We’re committed to diversity and inclusion, and want people from all walks of life to apply for our vacancies. We’re a disability confident leader with disabled-friendly offices and we’ll make reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process to help you; please note your needs on your application form. If you need additional support with your application, please get in touch with us on 02392 896758 or email HRrecruitment@vividhomes.co.uk. We’ll be happy to help.