Penetration Testing Lead

LLOYDS BANKING GROUP

City of Edinburgh

On-site

GBP 93,000 - 120,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Generous pension contribution

Annual bonus

Share schemes including free shares

Discounted shopping

30 days holiday

Wellbeing initiatives

Job summary

Lloyds Banking Group is seeking a Penetration Testing Lead to drive the testing strategy and manage a skilled team across diverse security assessments.

You will shape the roadmap for traditional and autonomous testing, collaborating with engineering and business stakeholders to strengthen the Group's security posture at scale.

Qualifications

Extensive experience leading penetration testing within large organisations.
Experience conducting and supervising complex application, API, cloud, infrastructure and network testing.
Strong understanding of testing methodologies, vulnerability discovery techniques, and attacker tradecraft.
Experience building and leading high-performing technical teams.
Excellent customer interaction skills, with the ability to communicate to technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership.

Responsibilities

Draw on extensive hands-on penetration testing experience to shape testing strategy and guide complex security assessments.
Lead and mentor a high-performing team of testers and foster technical excellence and collaboration.
Define and carry out the Penetration Testing roadmap aligned to CSO and Group security objectives.
Advance autonomous testing through collaboration with AVR and Harness teams for scalable validation.
Communicate risks and testing outcomes to stakeholders and help prioritize remediation.

Skills

Penetration testing leadership

Application security testing

Cloud security

Team leadership

Stakeholder communication

Education

Cyber Security / Computer Science degree

Tools

Offensive security tooling

Attacker tradecraft

Job description

Posted date Posted Yesterday

We're rebooting an icon and building the future of finance.

Find out why you should join us.

JOB TITLE: Penetration Testing Lead

Salary

Outside London: £92, 701 - £119,966

London: £107,304 - £138,864

Location

Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh or London

Working Pattern

Our work style is hybrid, which involves spending at least two days per week, or 40% of our time, at one of our office locations above.

About this Opportunity

This is a pivotal moment to join Lloyds Banking Group and the Chief Security Office as we transform how security is delivered across the Group.

We're looking for an experienced and highly capable Penetration Testing Lead to lead and evolve our penetration testing capability. Reporting to the Offensive Security Lead, you'll be accountable for the strategic direction, operational delivery and technical excellence of the team. This role combines deep technical expertise with inspirational leadership, leading a team of highly skilled penetration testers while shaping the roadmap for both human-led and autonomous security testing across the Group. Spanning traditional end-to-end penetration testing services and continuous assurance capabilities, you'll work closely with engineering, security and business stakeholders, as well as the Autonomous Vulnerability Research and Harness Engineering teams, to continuously improve the Group's security posture.

If you're passionate about offensive security, enjoy developing high-performing teams, and want to influence cyber resilience at enterprise scale, we'd love to hear from you.

What You'll Be Doing:

Draw on extensive hands-on penetration testing experience to shape testing strategy, guide the execution of complex application and infrastructure security assessments, and ensure the delivery of high-quality, risk-focused testing that helps strengthen the Group's security posture.
Lead, mentor and develop a high-performing team of penetration testers, encouraging a culture of technical excellence, continuous improvement, innovation and open communication.
Define and carry out the Penetration Testing roadmap, ensuring alignment to CSO and wider Group security objectives while delivering a comprehensive security testing programme spanning threat resilience, regulatory, change-driven and continuous assurance testing.
Drive the evolution of autonomous security testing through close collaboration with the Autonomous Vulnerability Research and Harness Engineering teams, helping embed automation, frontier model testing and scalable security validation capabilities across the testing lifecycle.
Build positive relationships across the Chief Security Office and wider organisation. Communicate security risks, testing outcomes, and recommendations to technical practitioners and executives. Collaborate with teams to prioritise and remediate findings swiftly.

What You'll Need

Extensive experience leading penetration testing, application security testing or offensive security functions within a large and complex organisation.
Demonstrable expertise in conducting and supervising complex application, API, cloud, infrastructure and network penetration testing engagements.
Strong understanding of penetration testing methodologies, vulnerability discovery techniques, offensive security tooling and attacker tradecraft.
Experience building, developing and leading high-performing technical teams.
Excellent customer interaction skills, with the ability to communicate effectively with technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership.
Strong understanding of modern enterprise technology environments, cloud platforms, operating systems, networks, software development practices and security controls.
Passion for cyber security research, continuous learning and advancing security testing practices.

Preferred Qualifications

Recognised offensive security certifications such as CREST, OSCP, OSCE, OSEP, GIAC, GWAPT, CPTS, CAPE or equivalent.
Software development, automation or engineering experience in any low-level or high-level language (C#, C++, C, Python, Bash, Java, Rust, etc.).
Experience within financial services or other highly regulated environments.
Degree or postgraduate qualification in Cyber Security, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Familiarity with autonomous vulnerability discovery, AI-enabled security testing, frontier model evaluation, fuzzing frameworks and modern security engineering practices.

Why join us?

We're transforming at pace. Investing billions in our people, data and tech to change the way we meet the needs of our 28 million customers. We're growing, and we'd love you to be part of the journey.

This is a place for you

Our ambition is to be the leading UK business for diversity, equity and inclusion supporting our customers, colleagues and communities, and we're committed to creating an environment in which everyone can thrive, learn and develop.

We also offer a wide-ranging benefits package, which includes: