Cyber Security Partner - Product Security

Tesco UK; Welwyn Garden City; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading retailer in the UK is seeking a Security Partner to engage with product teams, ensuring security is integrated into their development processes. The ideal candidate will have extensive knowledge in secure design, cloud security, and application security. This role offers a blend of remote and office working opportunities, promoting a collaborative environment focused on innovation and security improvement.

Benefits

Flexible working patterns

Inclusive culture

Qualifications

• Experience in application security and supply chain security.
• Experience with regulations like GDPR, PCI-DSS is desirable.
• Azure or AWS cloud security certifications are desirable.

Responsibilities

• Engage security champions and offer technical advisory.
• Lead teams in raising the bar on security by design.
• Perform product security activities and strengthen application security.

Skills

Secure design principles

Cloud security

Secure development practices

Application security

Secure pipelines

Open-source security

Hands-on product security experience

Dev(sec)ops practices

Threat modelling

Good communication skills

Education

Degree in computer science / information systems or engineering field

Tools

SAST

DAST

SCA

IaC

Kubernetes

Java

Golang

Python

Job description

The position will be based at our Tesco Technology offices in London.

About the Security Partners team

We are the trusted security advisors for Tesco Technology. Our purpose is to collaborate seamlessly with the product and engineering stakeholders, leveraging our deep expertise in cyber security to design and implement robust, resilient solutions that protect our business and customers from cyber threats.

We are a dynamic and expanding global team of 15+ experts, serving as the strategic link between the wider security group and software engineering teams that develop cutting‑edge services at scale to support the retail business.

Tesco Technology comprises several technology domains with over 100+ teams, each entrusted with their own security. These teams enjoy significant autonomy, balanced by the responsibility to make customer‑centric decisions and security. Rather than imposing controls through rigid processes and security gates, we empower these engineering teams to innovate by providing security guidance that helps them make informed decisions for Tesco. Encouragingly, these teams are enthusiastic partners in enhancing security, working more efficiently, and integrating security into every aspect of their ways of working. This collaborative approach sets us apart from traditional security teams. We proudly identify ourselves as Security Partners, not security police, emphasizing our role as the “trusted advisors” rather than enforcers.

Partners engage key people in engineering to make security contextual and frictionless. After all, security is a journey and there is no one‑size‑fits‑all.

Join the team and be part of this exciting journey!

The Role

As a Security Partner, you will deeply engage within product areas and influence the way security is delivered by them. You will be supported by experts in the team, nonetheless. To achieve this, you are good at secure design principles, cloud security, secure development practices and patterns, application security, secure pipelines, open‑source security and related areas. And not to mention, you are versatile to learn anything that comes along your way.

Being the trusted advisor

As enterprise applications become more distributed, adaptive to technological advancements, and run from hybrid infrastructure, teams need to navigate through different complexities and make key security decisions along the way. A trusted security advisor empowers teams to achieve scalable and sustainable security maturity throughout the SDLC process.

• Develop in‑depth understanding of the product area, engage with key product and technical people for assessing the security and privacy controls.
• Engage teams in security roadmap discussions and continuously improve security posture of what they build.
• Demonstrate how weaknesses in design or code can be compromised and exploited. You should translate technical risks into business risks and potential impact to Tesco.
• Engage security champions, key developers, and offer technical advisory to support completion of security initiatives, and remediation of vulnerabilities or risks.
• Take part in key product and architecture decisions to embed security.
• Perform product security activities, from the early development of security requirements, architecture reviews, and threat modelling, to strengthening application security, mitigating supply‑chain risks, securing secrets, pipelines, reviewing vulnerabilities, and infrastructure security.
• Develop and propose security controls or compensating measures as needed. Continuously seek both tactical and strategic solutions to enhance security.
• Lead teams on raising the bar on security by design, and security by default.
• Assist/support adoption of new capabilities to enhance security across people, process, and tools.
• Be ready to code. If you can raise a PR (pull request) to resolve a security issue, you have the freedom to do so.
• Participate in assurance activities like security testing, purple testing, assurance, auditing.
• Empower the teams you work with, but also challenge the status‑quo.
• Be an advocate for good security, take part in strengthening organisation standards and policies.
• You are committed to continuous improvement, seizing opportunities, and inspiring change for the team.

• Hands‑on product security experience from developing requirements, reviewing architecture, applying design principles, to application security, pipeline security, infrastructure, and secure monitoring.
• Experience in leading security initiatives, dev(sec)ops practices with product and engineering teams.
• Experience in threat modelling and designing security/privacy controls to mitigate risks.
• Experience in application security, supply chain security, and using tools such as SAST, DAST, SCA, and IaC. Experience in reviewing code to spot weaknesses and suggesting mitigations.
• Experience applying industry standards like OWASP ASVS (Application Security Verification Standard), OWASP Top 10, CIS controls and benchmarks.
• Good understanding of web application, REST APIs, micro‑services, eventing, modern application frameworks, and mobile apps.
• Experience with cloud native and hybrid architectures with an emphasis on containerised workloads and Kubernetes.
• Some development experience is always a plus – Java, cloud, Golang, Python. You do not need to be a developer but we need you to understand the implications of security on engineering velocity.
• Degree in computer science / information systems or engineering field, or equivalent experience.
• Experience with regulations like GDPR, PCI‑DSS is desirable.
• Azure or AWS cloud security certifications is desirable.
• Good communicator, listener, influencer.

Our vision at Tesco is to become every customer’s favourite way to shop, whether they are at home or out on the move. Our core purpose is ‘Serving our customers, communities and planet a little better every day’. Serving means more than a transactional relationship with our customers. It means acting as a responsible and sustainable business for all stakeholders, for the communities we are part of and for the planet.

We are proud to have an inclusive culture at Tesco where everyone truly feels able to be themselves. At Tesco, we not only celebrate diversity, but recognise the value and opportunity it brings. We’re committed to creating a workplace where differences are valued, and make sure that all colleagues are given the same opportunities. We’re proud to have been accredited Disability Confident Leader and we’re committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. For further information on the accessibility support we can offer, please click here.

We’re a big business and we can offer a range of diverse full‑time & part‑time working patterns across our many business areas, which means that we can find something that works for you. We work in a more blended pattern – combining office and remote working. Our offices will continue to be where we connect, collaborate and innovate. If you are applying internally, please speak to the Hiring Manager about how this can work for you – Everyone is welcome at Tesco.