Cybersecurity Design Lead

Vallum Associates; Sheffield; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Vallum Associates is seeking a Design Engineer to manage end-to-end solution design and publish architecture documents aligned with business requirements and standards.

The role involves presenting solutions at design authorities, sharing design decisions, and providing technical thought leadership across programmes. You will collaborate with senior leaders and SMEs to mitigate risks and drive architectural excellence.

Qualifications

• Degree or work experience in cybersecurity, computer science, software engineering, or related field.
• CISSP/CISM certification or other broad cybersecurity industry-recognised certificate preferred
• Experience in enterprise architecture and governance.

Responsibilities

• Produce end-to-end solution designs aligned with reference architecture and business requirements.
• Publish key design decisions, deviations, and technical risks where appropriate.
• Present designs at design authorities and senior leadership for input and approval.
• Provide technical thought leadership and direction to aligned projects; act as SME.
• Govern architecture artefacts through governance processes and peer reviews.

Skills

Security architecture

Solution architecture

Stakeholder communication

Presentations

Thought leadership

Education

Cybersecurity degree

CISSP/CISM certification

Tools

Hashicorp Vault

Terraform

Job description

Design Engineer to manage end-to-end solution design and are responsible for delivering architecture design documents in line with functional and non-functional business requirements, strategies, principles, standards, and patterns.

Alongside the creation of high-level designs, Design Engineer will be required to publish new architecture patterns, key decisions, design deviations, and technical risks and issues where appropriate.

Design Engineer should be comfortable presenting and sharing solutions at design authorities and senior leadership & stakeholders. Additionally, the Design Engineer will provide technical thought leadership and direction to their aligned projects and may stand in as subject matter experts and consultants related programmes.

Principal Preferred Requirements

Cybersecurity Expertise:

• Significant experience and proven technical depth within one of the following domains of cybersecurity; security operations & incident response, threat & vulnerability management, identity & access management, cryptography, infrastructure, network, application, data, cloud
• Broad background across information technology with the ability to communicate clearly with non-security technical SMEs at a comfortable level
• Excellent command of cybersecurity organisation practices, operations risk management processes, principles, architectural requirements, engineering threats and vulnerabilities, including incident response methodologies
• Keen understanding of national and international laws, regulations, policies and ethics related to financial industry cybersecurity
• Experience and understanding of both the roles and interlock between enterprise & solution architecture
• Experience in both operational and transformation cybersecurity roles or a clear working understanding of both perspectives
• Experience working in large-scale IT transformation programmes

Identity & Access Management

• Experience working in a Hashicorp Vault environment (on-prem preferred)
• Experience in using Hashicorp Terraform including designing and building of complex modules
• In-depth real-world experience in Vault integration specifically navigating Secret Engines and Authentication methods resulting in robust and reusable patterns for consumption
• Ownership of root cause investigation into Vault integration problems, defining the monitoring of usage trends and creating efficiencies in the service
• Experience of designing or implementing Workload Identity Frameworks within large scale enterprises
• Capable of defining secrets management strategy and influencing the future direction of secrets management within the bank
• Federated Identity Management: Enabling identity sharing and single sign-on across different organisations or domains.
• Privileged Access Management (PAM): Securing, controlling, and monitoring access to critical systems by privileged users.
• Authentication Protocols: Implementing secure authentication mechanisms like Kerberos, OAuth, and SAML.
• Privileged Access Management (PAM): Securing, controlling, and monitoring access to critical systems by privileged users.
• Authentication Protocols: Implementing secure authentication mechanisms like Kerberos, OAuth, and SAML.

Qualifications & Certifications:

• Degree or work experience directly in cybersecurity, computer science, software engineering, or related field
• CISSP/CISM certification or other broad cybersecurity industry-recognised certificate preferred
• SABSA or TOGAF certified preferred

Platform & Technology:

• High proficiency and expertise in Jira for project & tasks management
• Working proficiency in Confluence for documentation and JIRA for task management

Principal Accountabilities and Responsibilities

Architecture & Design:

• Produce, manage, and update end-to-end solution designs in line with reference architecture & business requirements
• Articulate and publish key design decision records and options to ensure all solutions follow a logical, transparent decision-making process
• Articulate, publish, and ensure approval of any design deviations resulting in technical debt
• Ensure any technical risks or issues arising from a solution design are recorded and mitigated.
• Produces, manages and translates the requirements into the architecture for that solution, ensuring technology and services meet the customer needs and expected business outcomes
• Ensures the design of the solutions are efficient, timely and cost effective throughout the project lifecycle
• Clear understanding of both the motivations of the business and technical security
• Promote strong documentation and clerkship

Governance:

• Ensures all high-level designs, architecture patterns, decision records, deviation requests, and technical risks or issue records undergo architectural and project governance processes
• Ensure all architecture artefacts undergo appropriate peer review prior to design authority presentation
• Present publications at technical design authorities for input, feedback, and approval