Cybersecurity project manager

AXA Group Operations; Madrid; On-site; EUR 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

AXA Group Operations is seeking a Senior Project Manager for Cyber Defense to lead security programs across borders. You will steer complex, multi-local IT projects, aligning with AXA GO processes while coordinating central and market teams, vendors, and stakeholders to deliver security initiatives.

The role emphasizes change management, requirements engineering, and strong communication to ensure on-time delivery and budget adherence in a global environment.

Qualifications

• Experience in project management and program management with a focus on security projects.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills to engage diverse communities.
• Proven ability to manage change and establish processes for organizational change management.
• Expertise in customer needs analysis and formulation of technical requirements.
• Extensive experience in third-party and quality management within security projects.

Responsibilities

• Accountable for the operational delivery of security projects and programs, on time, on budget, and within scope.
• Lead the project team, including central team, market PMs, and third parties.
• Review and negotiate project plans, maintaining accountability for delivery.
• Establish metrics and KPIs to monitor performance and progress.
• Ensure execution aligns with AXA GO processes and project lifecycle.
• Manage project/program budget and expenditure to budget commitments.
• Identify and track risks, issues, and alerts with action plans.
• Liaise between Cyber Defense and technical/business communities to communicate status.
• Communicate progress to stakeholders; manage change requests and approvals.
• Handle procurement and contract matters with Group Procurement.
• Oversee SOC expansion and monitoring capabilities; deploy new SOC tools.
• Drive adoption of SOAR, EDR, XDR, and cloud security in SOC.
• Implement automated threat detection/response using AI/ML; develop playbooks.
• Automate security orchestration and monitoring workflows; integrate threat intelligence.

Skills

Communication skills

Stakeholder management

Change management

Requirements analysis

Third-party management

Education

Engineering degree

BS/MS in Computer Science

Project management certification

Tools

SOAR

EDR

XDR

Cloud security

Job description

The Cyber Defense Project Management team is in charge of managing and delivering the Security projects and Programs related to the Cyber Defense products.

Security Operations Center (SOC), is one of Cyber Defense products, delivers the following capabilities to the AXA entities around the globe: Security Monitoring and Detection, Security Incident Response and Threat Intelligence.

Main missions

Your responsibilities include:

• Accountable for the operational delivery of security projects and programs, ensuring they are delivered on time, on budget, and within scope.
• Leading the project team, including central team, project managers within markets, and third parties.
• Reviewing and negotiating project plans and schedules, maintaining full accountability for the delivery of the project within your scope.
• Establishing metrics and KPIs to monitor and control the performance of the project.
• Reviewing and managing the progress of projects to ensure execution is in accordance with defined plans.
• Ensuring execution of the project is aligned with AXA GO project management and project lifecycle processes.
• Monitoring and managing the project/program budget and expenditure to ensure the project is delivered to agreed budgetary commitments.
• Identifying and tracking risks, issues, and alerts on projects and ensuring appropriate action plans are established and actively monitored.
• Acting as a liaison between Cyber Defense and various technical and business communities within AXA to communicate the project status, ensure alignment with their own change activities, and promote continuous collaboration.
• Communicating relevant and timely information to stakeholders to ensure visibility of progress, budget/expenditure, risks, issues, and associated with delivery.
• Managing change requests (budget, planning, scope), exposing decisions to be made, proposing solutions, gaining and recording decision approvals.
• Managing procurement and contract matters in conjunction with Group Procurement.

In addition to the responsibilities outlined above, as a Subject Matter Expert, you will focus on Security Operations Center (SOC) related projects and initiatives. This will include:

• Overseeing and providing expertise in the expansion and enhancement of our Security Operations Center and monitoring capabilities.
• Managing the deployment of new security tools and technologies within the SOC environment.
• Assisting AXA entities in their security transformation and usage of AXA global security products.
• Driving the adoption and utilization of security solutions such as SOAR, EDR, XDR, cloud security capabilities within the SOC environment.
• Automation focus:Automated Threat Detection and Response: Implementing automated tools and processes for real-time threat detection and response, including the use of AI and machine learning to identify and mitigate security threats more efficiently.
• Automated Incident Response: Developing automated incident response playbooks and workflows to streamline the response to security incidents, reducing the time to detect and respond to security events.
• Automated Security Orchestration: Deploying security orchestration and automation tools to integrate and automate security processes, such as incident response, threat intelligence, and vulnerability management.
• Automated Security Monitoring: Utilizing automation to enhance security monitoring capabilities, including the automation of log analysis, anomaly detection, and security event correlation.
• Automated Threat Intelligence Integration: Integrating automated threat intelligence feeds and tools to enhance the SOC's ability to proactively identify and respond to emerging threats.

We are looking for someone with the following experience and skills:

Experience

• Experience in project management and program management, with a focus on security projects and initiatives.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills to effectively engage with diverse technical and business communities within AXA.
• Proven ability to manage change and establish processes for organizational change management to achieve required business outcomes.
• Expertise in customer needs analysis and the formulation of technical requirements to meet those needs.
• Extensive experience in third-party management and quality management within the context of security projects and programs.
• Engineering Degree , BS/MS Business Administration, Project management, Computer Science
• Agile methodology (e.g. SCRUM or equivalent) is an advantage
• Process improvement certification (e.g. Lean, Six Sigma) is an advantage

Technical skills

• Experience in project management 5 years
• Experience in managing complex international IT projects 5 years
• Experience in program management or managing multiple projects in parallel and multi-local projects
• Managed budget between 2-5M €
• Experience in delivering fixed price projects (preferred)
• Experience in Information Security field > 1 years
• Experience in Security, Network or Infrastructure solution deployment >5 years
• Experience in delivering transversal projects touching multiple dimensions >5 years
• Experience in managing third parties >5 years
• Fluent in English is a necessity (including technical Information security English)
• French is a plus

What we offer

We bring together the expertise, cultural diversity and creativity of over 8,000 employees worldwide and we’re committed to equal opportunities in all aspects of employment (gender, LGBT+, disabled persons, or people of different origins) and to promoting Diversity & Inclusion by creating a work environment where all employees are treated with dignity and respect, and where individual differences are valued.