Data Security Lead

Barclays; Greater London; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Barclays is seeking a Data Security Lead to strengthen data protection and security posture across critical platforms. You will partner with technology, security, and business teams to design robust controls, ensuring sensitive information is managed securely and regulatory obligations are met.

You will influence senior stakeholders, balance risk and performance, and drive security improvements in a highly regulated environment.

Qualifications

• GDPR, DPIAs, privacy risk assessments in regulated environments.
• Data Protection by Design: classification, encryption, access control, retention and sharing.
• Tokenisation/encryption technologies with risk/regulatory balance.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with stakeholders to understand security requirements in processes and IT projects.
• Perform risk assessments to identify threats and guide mitigations; communicate findings to senior stakeholders.
• Develop and implement security policies aligned to risk framework across operations.
• Oversee security controls testing and monitoring across IT systems to ensure effectiveness and risk mitigation.
• Deliver training to educate employees on cybersecurity best practices.
• Lead complex cybersecurity incidents with IT teams and experts to resolve cases.
• Identify emerging cybersecurity trends and advocate adoption of new security solutions.

Skills

Data protection

Privacy compliance

Regulatory expertise

Senior stakeholder leadership

Cloud/data platform/AI awareness

Security governance/risk management

Education

CIPP/E, CIPM, CIPT, ISO 27001, NIST, COBIT certifications

Tools

Protegrity

Thales CipherTrust

TDE (data at rest encryption)

Job description

Join Barclays as a Data Security Lead and play a pivotal role in strengthening the organisation's data protection and security posture across critical business platforms. You will partner with technology, security, and business teams to design and implement robust data protection controls, ensuring sensitive information is managed securely, regulatory obligations are met, and innovation can be delivered with confidence in a highly regulated environment.

To be successful as a Data Security Lead, you should have experience with:

• Extensive data protection, privacy, and regulatory expertise – Deep expertise in GDPR, DPIAs, privacy risk assessments, and data protection within regulated environments.

• Data security architecture and control design – Strong experience designing and implementing Data Protection by Design controls, including data classification, encryption, access management, retention, masking, and secure data sharing.

• Technical Skills – Technical expertise in tokenisation and encryption technologies (e.g., Protegrity, Thales Cipher Trust, TDE, field/column/application/file-level encryption, and encryption in transit), with the ability to balance risk, performance, and regulatory requirements.

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Senior stakeholder leadership and risk-based decision-making :Ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive risk-based decisions on privacy and security matters.

• Cloud, data platform, and AI awareness: Understanding of data security and privacy considerations across cloud, data platforms, analytics, and AI environments.

• Professional certifications or recognised frameworks: Relevant certifications or knowledge of frameworks such as CIPP/E, CIPM, CIPT, ISO 27001, NIST, or COBIT.

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

This role is based in Canary Wharf Office.

Purpose of the role

To provide a primary liaison service between the business, technology, and security functions. In order to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information, and support the mitigation of security risk.

Accountabilities

• Collaboration with stakeholders to understand their security requirements in business processes and IT projects, to enhance overall risk management.
• Execution of risk assessments to identify and prioritise potential cybersecurity threats that could impact the banks operations and data and guide the implementation of mitigation strategies and communicate findings to relevant findings to relevant senior stakeholders.
• Collaboration with business units to develop and implement security policies and procedures for the banks operations aligned to the risk management framework.
• Management of the implementation, testing and monitoring of security controls across the banks IT systems to ensure the effectiveness of controls and mitigation of risk.
• Execution of training content and sessions to educate employees, enhance cybersecurity awareness and provide guidance on safe online practices.
• Management of complex cybersecurity incidents by collaborating with IT teams and response experts to effectively resolve cases through analysis, expertise support and project supervision.
• Identification of emerging cybersecurity trends, threats, and new technologies to address potential risks by advocating the adoption of new security solutions.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and elevate breaches of policies/procedures..
• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements..
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others..
• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.