Principal Security Architect

Artificial Labs; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private medical insurance

Income protection insurance

Life insurance

On-site gym

Enhanced maternity/paternity pay

Team events and parties

Stock options

Equipment allowance

Job summary

Artificial Labs is seeking a senior security professional to set standards across our product and platform. You will work closely with engineers to embed secure development practices, design threat models, and guide cloud security and data protection as we scale.

The role focuses on hands-on security leadership across the full product lifecycle, with an emphasis on enabling fast, secure delivery and advancing security maturity in a growing InsurTech environment.

Qualifications

• Senior or principal security architecture or application security experience.
• Hands-on cloud security background including identity, encryption and guardrails.
• Solid secure software development background with threat modelling and secure coding.
• Experience in vulnerability management, identity and privileged access, data security, SBOMs.
• Pragmatic approach enabling engineers to move quickly without compromising security.
• Clear communicator able to translate security risk for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Interest in applying AI to strengthen product security where appropriate.

Responsibilities

• Provide practical, hands-on security guidance across the development lifecycle.
• Own secure development and coding standards; coordinate penetration testing.
• Lead threat modelling on high-risk work and enable teams to perform it themselves.
• Define cloud security standards, access control, encryption, and guardrails.
• Determine vulnerability severity and remediation priorities; set engineering standards.
• Design identity and privileged access management, including strong authentication.
• Oversee data security practices and data-loss-prevention tooling rollout.
• Evaluate security implications with suppliers and third parties.

Skills

Senior security architect

Cloud security

Secure SDLC

Vulnerability management

Pragmatic approach

Communication

AI in security

Job description

About Artificial

Help shape the future of specialty insurance
At Artificial, we’re building the next generation of technology for the specialty (re)insurance market. Our mission is to transform how brokers and carriers operate in complex markets by removing operational barriers and enabling smarter, faster decision‑making.

We use modern technology to solve real challenges for some of the world’s leading brokers and insurers. By automating the repetitive and structuring the complex, we help our partners unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth.

You’ll be joining a collaborative team that values curiosity, ownership, and continuous learning. We work in an environment where ideas are heard, support is built-in, and outcomes matter. Everyone here has the chance to make a tangible impact on our products, our customers, and the industry.

We've just raised $45M (£33M) in Series B funding from lead investor CommerzVentures, new investor Move Capital, as well as all existing shareholders. This investment round gives us the room to grow with confidence, continue to innovate, and ensure that Artificial remains the first choice for brokers and carriers seeking a smarter way to trade digitally.

Join us, and take the chance to be a part of something that will change the landscape of insurance for generations.

About the role

This is a senior technical security role for our product and platform. You'll set the standards and guardrails that shape how we build, and you'll spend a lot of your time working directly with engineers to help them build securely. We want someone who gets stuck in and helps teams solve problems, not someone who sits apart and signs things off.

Security has to be designed into what we build, not added afterwards. You'll own our secure development standards, run threat modelling on the work that carries the most risk, and set the direction for how we handle cloud security, identity, vulnerability management and data protection. A big part of the job is lifting the security knowledge of the engineering and product teams so that sensible decisions get made in‑team every day, without everything having to route through you.

You'll work across engineering, platform and the wider security team, and your focus will be the technical side of security across the whole product lifecycle, from how we design and build through to how we protect data and control access as we grow.

Responsibilities

• Give engineers practical, hands‑on security advice throughout the development lifecycle, so they can ship quickly and safely

• Own our secure development and secure coding standards, and coordinate penetration testing across the delivery lifecycle

• Run threat modelling on the highest‑risk work, and set up the approach and training so teams can do their own

• Set the security standards and guardrails for our cloud environment, covering secure configuration, access and encryption, and support the people who put them into practice

• Decide how we judge vulnerability severity and remediation priority, and set the standards that engineering works to

• Design how we manage identity and privileged access, including strong authentication and controlled elevation of access

• Lead our approach to data security, including classification, keeping customer data properly separated, and choosing and rolling out data‑loss‑prevention tooling

• Bring deep security judgement to assessments of higher‑risk suppliers

About you

• Plenty of experience in a senior or principal security architecture or application security role, ideally in a cloud‑based software company that has grown quickly

• Strong hands‑on cloud security background, covering secure configuration, access and identity, encryption, guardrails and security considerations for modern cloud and serverless architecture

• Solid grounding in secure software development, including threat modelling, secure coding, awareness of common application security risks such as the OWASP Top 10, automated security testing and running penetration tests

• Practical experience across vulnerability management, identity and privileged access, data security, and software supply‑chain practices such as SBOMs

• A pragmatic approach that helps engineers move quickly, rather than slowing them down

• Clear communicator who can win over technical and non‑technical colleagues and turn security risk into practical decisions

• Willing to explore where AI can strengthen how we build and secure our products, and pragmatic about applying it where it genuinely fits

We especially want to hear from you if you have

• Worked in InsurTech, FinTech or another regulated industry

• Helped build a security function or set of practices from an early stage

• Built security into a modern engineering delivery setup

• Worked on software that serves many customers from shared infrastructure, and the data‑separation questions that come with it

• Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CCSP or an AWS security qualification, though we care more about what you can do than what you hold

• Spent time training and coaching engineers on security

Benefits

• Private medical insurance

• Income protection insurance

• Life insurance of 4 * base salary

• On‑site gym and shower facilities

• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay

• Team social events and company parties

• Salary exchange on pension and nursery fees

• Access to Maji, the financial wellbeing platform

• Company stock options managed through Ledgy

• Milestone Birthday Bonus and a Life Events leave policy

• Generous holiday allowance of 28 days plus national holidays

• Home office and equipment allowance, and a company MacBook

• Learning allowance and leave to attend conferences or take exams

• YuLife employee benefits, including EAP and bereavement helplines

• For each new hire, we plant a tree through our partnership with Ecologi Action

• The best coffee machine in London, handmade in Italy and imported just for us!

• We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to building a team that reflects the diverse communities around us. If there’s anything you need to make the hiring process more accessible, just let us know—we’re happy to make adjustments. You’re also welcome to share your preferred pronouns with us at any point.

• Think you don’t meet every requirement? Please apply anyway. We value potential as much as experience, and we know that raw talent counts.

• As part of our hiring process, we’ll carry out some background checks. These may include a criminal record check, reviewing your credit history, speaking with previous employers and confirming your academic qualifications.