Red Team Lead: Offensive Security & Threat Intelligence

UK Research and Innovation; Swindon; Hybrid; GBP 45,000 - 57,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

30 days’ annual leave

Employee discounts and offers onRetail

Employee assistance programme

Flexible working options

Job summary

UK Research and Innovation is seeking a skilled Information Security professional to lead penetration testing and red-team activities, safeguarding critical research assets. The role focuses on offensive security across diverse environments, identifying real-world risks, and guiding remediation with clear reporting.

You will oversee threat intelligence, run targeted tests, and manage external call-off penetration testing contracts, while aligning with UKRI’s security strategy and compliance

Qualifications

• Experience delivering penetration testing and/or red-team activity in enterprise environments.
• Technical capability across OS, networking, identity/auth, and cloud platforms (Azure/AWS).
• Proficiency with offensive security tools to identify and exploit real-world paths.
• Adapt quickly to new technologies and techniques in offensive security.
• Produce clear, high-quality penetration testing reports for technical and non-technical audiences.
• Continued professional development in offensive security via certifications or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Complete targeted penetration tests and red team exercises to identify exploitable vulnerabilities.
• Develop and maintain offensive tooling to simulate adversary tactics and techniques.
• Monitor and analyse threat intelligence feeds to identify threats and relevant TTPs.
• Produce technical threat reports and briefings to inform security posture.
• Conduct proactive threat hunting based on intelligence-led hypotheses.
• Support risk assessments with insights from offensive operations and threat landscape analysis.

Skills

Penetration testing

Red team

Threat intelligence

Nmap

Burp Suite

Metasploit

Cloud platforms (Azure/AWS)

Report writing

Threat hunting

Tools

Nmap

Burp Suite

Metasploit

Job description

UK Research and Innovation is seeking a skilled Information Security professional to lead penetration testing and red-team activities, safeguarding critical research assets. The role focuses on offensive security across diverse environments, identifying real-world risks, and guiding remediation with clear reporting.

You will oversee threat intelligence, run targeted tests, and manage external call-off penetration testing contracts, while aligning with UKRI’s security strategy and compliance