Red Team Operator

barclays; United Kingdom; Remote; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Barclays is seeking a Red Team Operator to join a skilled, close-knit team that loves this work. You’ll perform full-scope red team engagements, emulating adversaries to test defenses across cyber, physical, social engineering, and process surfaces.

You’ll design phishing and social engineering campaigns end-to-end, set up infrastructure, craft convincing pretexts, and develop payloads. You’ll work with defenders to improve detection and resilience and stay ahead of emerging threats.

Qualifications

• Hands-on red team role focusing on cyber, physical, social engineering, and processes.
• Experience delivering phishing and social engineering campaigns end to end.
• Proficiency with C2 frameworks and defensive evasion techniques.

Responsibilities

• Take part in full-scope Red Team engagements against cyber, physical, social engineering, and process attack surfaces.
• Design and deliver phishing and social engineering campaigns end to end.
• Operate and tune Command and Control frameworks (Cobalt Strike, Nighthawk) through initial access, post-exploitation, and lateral movement.
• Develop custom tooling, tradecraft, and EDR/defence-evasion techniques.
• Turn engagements into clear attack narratives for engineers and executives.
• Collaborate with defensive teams to improve detection and resilience.
• Research emerging TTPs and bring new techniques to the team's methodology.

Skills

Red Team

Threat emulation

Social engineering

Phishing campaigns

Education

Certifications like CRTO, OSCP / OSEP, CRTP or CREST (CCSAS / CCRTS) welcome

Tools

Cobalt Strike

Nighthawk

Job description

Job Description

Purpose of the role

To identify potential vulnerabilities within the banks IT systems using penetration testing tools and techniques to ensure security of computer systems, applications, servers, and networks.

Accountabilities

• Development and execution of assessments, audits, and threat models to identify vulnerabilities within the banks systems, applications and servers using penetration tools and techniques, and communicate key findings and recommendations to stakeholders.
• Collaboration with stakeholders and IT teams to identify emerging cyber-attack techniques, tools and technologies and to support the development of penetration testing methodologies.
• Development and maintenance of comprehensive documents and reports for senior stakeholders on penetration test findings, and remediation guidance.
• Collaboration with stakeholders to understand their security requirements and controls in business processes, application/services, to enhance overall security posture and assurance.
• Identification of emerging vulnerabilities, exploit codes and cyber-attacks to develop testing methodologies and assurance activities.

Assistant Vice President Expectations

• To advise and influence decision making, contribute to policy development and take responsibility for operational effectiveness. Collaborate closely with other functions/ business divisions.
• Lead a team performing complex tasks, using well developed professional knowledge and skills to deliver on work that impacts the whole business function. Set objectives and coach employees in pursuit of those objectives, appraisal of performance relative to objectives and determination of reward outcomes
• 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 lead collaborative assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will identify new directions for assignments and/ or projects, identifying a combination of cross functional methodologies or practices to meet required outcomes.
• Consult on complex issues; providing advice to People Leaders to support the resolution of escalated issues.
• Identify ways to mitigate risk and developing new policies/procedures in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Take ownership for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work done.
• Perform work that is closely related to that of other areas, which requires understanding of how areas coordinate and contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the organisation sub-function.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategy.
• Engage in complex analysis of data from multiple sources of information, internal and external sources such as procedures and practises (in other areas, teams, companies, etc).to solve problems creatively and effectively.
• Communicate complex information. 'Complex' information could include sensitive information or information that is difficult to communicate because of its content or its audience.
• Influence or convince stakeholders 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.

We’re looking for a Red Team Operator to join a skilled, close-knit team that genuinely loves this work. You’ll take part and operate in full-scope Red Team operations – cyber, physical, social engineering, and everything in between – emulating real-world adversaries to test how our defences actually hold up under pressure. When you find the gaps, you’ll help close them.

This is a hands-on role for someone who’s happiest with a shell, a payload, and a hard target. You’ll have time to research new tradecraft, and a team of talented, motivated operators around you to bounce ideas off, pair on tooling and learn from.

What you’ll be doing

• Taking part and operating in full-scope Red Team engagements against well-defined adversarial objectives across cyber, physical, social engineering, and process attack surfaces.
• Helping design and deliver phishing and social engineering campaigns end to end – standing up the supporting infrastructure (domains, redirectors, mail and landing-page servers), crafting convincing pretexts, and developing the accompanying payloads to emulate realistic threat-actor delivery.
• Operating and tuning Command and Control frameworks (e.g. Cobalt Strike, Nighthawk, or equivalent) through initial access, post-exploitation, and lateral movement.
• Developing custom tooling, tradecraft, and EDR / defence-evasion techniques to emulate realistic threat actors.
• Turning engagements into clear, compelling attack narratives – the kind that land with both the engineers who’ll fix the issues and the executives who need to understand the risk.
• Contributing to detection and resilience improvements through close collaboration with defensive teams.
• Researching emerging TTPs. Threats, and tooling, and bringing new techniques into the team’s methodology.

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Certifications like CRTO, OSCP / OSEP, CRTP or CREST (CCSAS / CCRTS) welcome, but your hands‑on ability matters far more than acronyms.
• Proficiency in at least one coding language.
• Demonstrated ability to solve complex and challenging technical problems.

You will be assessed on key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as job-specific technical skills.

This role is fully remote role with occasional travel required.