Senior Cyber Security Engineer

Aboutus Ft; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous annual leave

Medical cover

Parental leave

Job summary

The Financial Times is seeking a Senior Cyber Security Engineer to mature application and cloud security across our cloud-native AWS estate. The role combines practical security work with mentoring and potential line management, ensuring secure delivery by default.

You will improve guardrails for SAST, SCA, secret scanning, and IaC scanning, and lead vulnerability management at scale while collaborating closely with product, platform, and engineering teams.

Qualifications

• Strong practical experience in application security and cloud security.
• Hands-on AWS security experience and remediation approaches.
• Experience improving vulnerability management across engineering teams.
• Experience improving cloud or IaC misconfiguration management at scale.
• Experience with security tooling in CI/CD workflows (SAST, SCA, secret scanning, IaC scanning).
• Ability to write Python scripts to automate security workflows.

Responsibilities

• Improve application security guardrails with actionable controls for engineers.
• Improve cloud and IaC security guardrails to reduce misconfigurations.
• Drive vulnerability management across engineering teams.
• Drive cloud misconfiguration management using developer-friendly workflows.
• Run practical threat modelling sessions influencing design decisions.
• Build automation and tooling to reduce manual effort.
• Support secure architecture decisions in reviews and roadmaps.
• Partner with product, platform and software engineering teams.
• Support incidents and lessons learned and share patterns.
• Mentor security engineers and possibly line-manage.

Skills

Application security

Cloud security

AWS security

Vulnerability management

Threat modelling

CI/CD security

SAST

Secret scanning

IaC scanning

Python scripting

Automation tooling

Security leadership

Agile/Scrum

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Splunk

Job description

About Us

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations, globally recognised for its authority, integrity and accuracy, with a mission to deliver quality information and services worldwide.At the FT, curiosity thrives and ambitious thinking is rewarded. Here, you’re given the chance to reach millions, create work that matters and deliver impartial journalism in a polarised world.In our warm, collaborative culture, you’ll connect with a diverse community of experts who support your growth, career aspirations and wellbeingYour future at the FT will be filled with opportunities that challenge and inspire you. With no fixed path, you’ll discover new skills and forge a career that can take you anywhere.Build a newsworthy career at the FT.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.

The Role Overview

We’re looking for a Senior Cyber Security Engineer to help mature application and cloud security across the FT’s cloud-native, AWS-hosted technology estate. This role has an approximate 50/50 focus across application security and cloud security, working closely with product, platform and engineering teams to make secure delivery easier by default.

You’ll shape and improve developer-friendly guardrails across GitHub-based CI/CD pipelines, AWS environments and infrastructure-as-code workflows. This includes improving SAST, software composition analysis, secret scanning, IaC scanning, vulnerability management and AWS misconfiguration management so that findings are actionable, low-noise and owned by the right teams.

Day to day, you’ll run practical threat-modelling sessions, review application and cloud designs, improve security playbooks, support vulnerability and misconfiguration remediation, and build automation that reduces toil. We’re looking for someone who has demonstrably improved security outcomes in real engineering environments, not just someone with theoretical knowledge of tools or frameworks.

Depending on team structure, you may also mentor or line-manage one or two security engineers, while remaining hands‑on and close to the technical work.

What you’ll bring to the role

Application and cloud security experience: practical experience across both application security and cloud security, ideally in AWS-hosted, cloud-native environments.

Developer-friendly security mindset: you know how to work with engineers, explain risk clearly and design controls that help teams move securely without unnecessary friction.

Vulnerability management at scale: experience improving how application vulnerabilities, dependency risks, bug bounty findings, penetration test findings and advisories are identified, prioritised, owned and remediated across engineering teams.

Cloud misconfiguration & vulnerability management: experience identifying and reducing infrastructure-as-code and AWS vulnerabilities & misconfigurations at scale through pragmatic guardrails, tooling and clear remediation paths.

Threat modelling: confidence running lightweight, practical threat-modelling sessions that lead to useful engineering decisions and risk reduction.

CI/CD and code security: hands‑on experience with security tooling such as SAST, software composition analysis, secret scanning and IaC scanning.

Automation mindset: ability to write scripts or small tools, ideally in Python, to reduce toil, improve visibility and surface meaningful risk.

Security leadership: ability to mentor other security engineers and influence engineers across the wider organisation. Depending on team structure, this may include line management.

AI security awareness: experience of leveraging AI to improve and scale appsec and cloud sec controls would be useful, but is not essential.

Key Responsibilities

Improve application security guardrails Tune and evolve SAST, software composition analysis, secret scanning and related controls so they are actionable, low-noise and useful to engineering teams.

Improve cloud and IaC security guardrails Help identify, prioritise and reduce AWS and infrastructure-as-code misconfigurations and vulnerabilities at scale.

Drive vulnerability management Improve how application vulnerabilities, dependency risks, bug bounty findings, penetration test findings and third-party advisories are triaged, prioritised and remediated.

Drive cloud misconfiguration management Help teams understand, own and remediate cloud security issues using pragmatic, developer-friendly workflows.

Run practical threat modelling Facilitate lightweight threat-modelling sessions for new products, features, services and architectural changes.

Build automation and tooling Create or improve scripts, integrations, dashboards and workflows that reduce manual effort and make risk easier to understand.

Support secure architecture decisions Provide application and cloud security input into design reviews, AWS architecture decisions and larger technical changes.

Partner with engineering teams Work closely with product, platform and software engineering teams to embed security into design, delivery and operational practices.

Support incidents and lessons learned Provide application and cloud security expertise during incidents and feed lessons learned back into patterns, tooling and guidance.

Mentor others Coach security engineers and engineering teams on practical security approaches. Depending on team structure, this may include line management of one or two security engineers.

Required Experience, Essential:

• Strong practical experience in application security and cloud security, ideally with a balanced focus across both.
• Hands‑on AWS security experience, including common misconfiguration patterns and practical remediation approaches.
• Experience improving vulnerability management across engineering teams, including prioritisation, ownership, remediation tracking and noise reduction.
• Experience in improving cloud or IaC misconfiguration management at scale in a developer-friendly way.
• Experience integrating, tuning or improving security tooling in CI/CD workflows, such as SAST, software composition analysis, secret scanning or IaC scanning.
• Experience running practical threat-modelling sessions that influence design, delivery or remediation decisions.
• Ability to write scripts or small tools, ideally in Python, to automate security workflows or improve visibility.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence engineers and technical leaders without relying on gatekeeping.
• Evidence of improving application security, cloud security or vulnerability management practices in a real engineering environment.
• Familiarity with Agile or Scrum ways of working.

Desirable

• Experience with leveraging AI for AppSec and CloudSec.
• AWS Certified Security – Speciality or equivalent practical AWS security experience.
• Terraform or CloudFormation expertise.
• Incident-management or incident-response experience.
• Experience with Splunk or similar logging/SIEM platforms.
• Experience with security metrics, dashboards or reporting that helped drive measurable risk reduction.
• Experience mentoring or line-managing security engineers.

What’s in it for You?

Our benefits vary by location but we are committed to providing best-in-class perks across all our offices. These include generous annual leave, medical cover, inclusive parental leave packages, subsidised gym memberships and opportunities to give back to the community. Full details of our benefits are available here.

We currently operate a hybrid model which requires staff to work onsite 50% of the time, subject to role requirements & regular review. While flexible working requests will be considered, not all patterns are suitable for all roles. We believe this balanced approach supports flexibility and protects our culture, making collaboration and communication easier, building stronger relationships and team cohesion, and supporting peer learning. We reserve discretion on reasonable notice to change this approach either generally or for specific individuals or teams.

Accessibility

We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory.

Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email [e-mail] and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Further information

At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications.

Candidates should be aware that the use of AI throughout the application process may be monitored to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process for all.