Head Of Security Operations

Canonical; Greater London; On-site; GBP 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Canonical is seeking a Head of Security Operations in London to lead a high‑perform SecOps team. You will define security standards, drive the SOC architecture, and orchestrate threat intelligence initiatives across Canonical's engineering and product teams.

You will mentor security professionals, implement new tools, and advance incident response playbooks while collaborating with leadership to align security with business goals.

Qualifications

• Proven track record mitigating advanced threats and nation-state actors.
• Deep knowledge of SOC architecture and design.
• Experience logging, firewalls, network segmentation, honeypots.
• Leadership and management ability.
• Excellent business English writing and presentations.
• Experience contributing to threat intelligence feeds.
• Familiarity with NIST CSF or security risk management.
• Undergraduate degree in CS or STEM.
• Drive and a track record of going above expectations.
• Passion for cutting-edge technology security.
• Experience in offensive or defensive security teams
• Experience with open source security tools
• Experience with ISO security standards
• Security posture management of corporate endpoints

Responsibilities

• Hire and mentor a team of outstanding security professionals.
• Define Canonical's SecOps standards and playbooks.
• Own and drive the architecture and design of the SOC.
• Analyse and improve Canonical's security architecture.
• Evaluate, select and implement new security tools and practices.
• Identify, contain and remediate security threats and cyber attacks.
• Grow SecOps presence and thought leadership; contribute to open source threat intel.
• Drive threat modelling and tabletop exercises across Engineering, IS and Canonical.
• Develop SecOps learning materials and publish insights.

Skills

SOC architecture

Incident response

Security leadership

Threat modelling

Security strategy

Public speaking

Open source tools

Threat intelligence

Education

BSc in Computer Science

Tools

SIEM

Firewalls

Honeypots

Job description

This global leadership role in cyber security is to manage the Security Operations (SecOps) team responsible for design, implementation and evolution of Canonical security practices, techniques, tools, systems and policies. The team is the primary owner of strategy and practices that determine how Canonical secures its data, internal infrastructure and build processes. They are responsible for assuring the security and integrity of our own infrastructure and product deployments. They design and implement technical security controls that ensure security threats are automatically identified, contained and remediated. The team will also contribute ideas and requirements for Canonical product security, improving the resilience and robustness of all Ubuntu customers and users subject to cyber attack.

As a leader on cyber security in the company, the SecOps team manager will collaborate with our Organisational Learning and Development team to develop playbooks and facilitate SecOps training across Canonical. They will operate in a wider security organisation, run a high performing security team and improve Canonical's security posture. They will lead initiatives to integrate the team's insights into Canonical's broader software development process.

While this is a management position, we expect managers to be expert practitioners, able to lead by example, contribute at the highest level, and assess work based on their own professional experience and skill. Candidates should have deep, hands-on expertise with a range of open source and proprietary security tooling and practices, which they can integrate into a holistic next generation security solution across the breadth of Canonical's interests.

The SecOps team's mission is not only to secure Canonical, but also to contribute to the security of the wider open source ecosystem. They might share knowledge through public presentations and industry events, and share threat intelligence with the wider community or represent Canonical in sector-specific governance bodies.

This role reports to the CISO.

What you will do in this role:

• Hire and mentor a team of outstanding technical security professionals
• Define Canonical's SecOps security standards and playbooks
• Own and drive the architecture and design of the SOC
• Analyse and improve Canonical's security architecture
• Evaluate, select and implement new security tools and practices
• Identify, contain and guide the remediation of security threats and cyber attacks
• Grow the presence and thought leadership of Canonical SecOps practice
• Contribute to open source threat intelligence initiatives
• Drive threat modelling, table top exercises and other SecOps practices across Engineering, IS and Canonical
• Develop Canonical SecOps learning and development materials
• Publish blog posts, whitepapers and conference presentations
• Identify, implement and track SecOps KPIs
• Plan and deliver SecOps work in the framework of Canonical's agile engineering practice
• Work with Security leadership to present information and influence change

What we are looking for

• Proven track record of mitigating with advanced threat actors and nation state threats
• Expert technical understanding of SOCs from the ground up
• In depth knowledge of SOC architecture and design including strategies for logging, firewalls, network segmentation, honeypots etc
• Someone who understands how the SOC works not just how to use it
• Ability to define, implement, automate and measure effective incident response playbooks
• Knowledge of security architecture and market-leading security tools
• Experience contributing to, and consuming, threat intelligence feeds
• Experience in security risk management frameworks such as NIST CSF
• An exceptional academic track record from both high school and university
• Undergraduate degree in Computer Science or STEM, or a compelling narrative about your alternative path
• Drive and a track record of going above-and-beyond expectations
• Deep personal motivation to be at the forefront of technology security
• Leadership and management ability
• Excellent business English writing and presentation skills
• Confidence to report security performance metrics with accountability for accuracy and completeness

Optional things we value

• Experience in offensive or defensive security teams with hands‑on ability
• Experience with open source security tools
• Experience with security standards such as ISO
• Experience with security posture management of corporate endpoitns

Head of Security Operations • London, GB