Senior Engineering Manager, Security

Primer; United Kingdom; Remote; GBP 60,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative company is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead the evolution of their security function. This role involves defining a long-term security strategy, managing risks related to data privacy and compliance, and leading a talented team in a remote-first environment. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in IT security management and cloud infrastructure security, particularly with AWS. Join a mission-driven team that values collaboration and offers a supportive culture as you tackle the challenges of building cutting-edge payment solutions.

Benefits

Competitive share options

Uncapped holiday, with 25 days minimum

Co-working space access

Workations & company retreat

£500 towards home office setup

Generous learning budget

Medical insurance

Additional perks depending on location

Qualifications

• Proven leadership in scaling security functions within regulated industries.
• Hands-on experience with modern security standards and frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Defining and executing a long-term security strategy targeting enterprise-grade resilience.
• Leading a high-impact security engineering team and embedding security into engineering.

Skills

Leadership in security functions

Cloud infrastructure security (AWS)

Modern security standards (SOC 2, PCI DSS, GDPR)

Risk management

Team building and hiring

Strategic mindset

Job description

An Introduction to Primer

We’re the world's first unified payment infrastructure, empowering businesses worldwide to unleash their payment potential. By choosing our platform, merchants can take control over their payment stack, create unique commerce experiences, accelerate their roadmap and increase payment success. We strive to make something complex incredibly simple and intuitive. The world's top investors, including Accel, Balderton, Iconiq, and Tencent, have invested in Primer's vision to rebuild payments and commerce from the ground up.

Join us in shaping the future of payments and commerce.

Security at Primer

As we continue to scale, we’re looking for an experienced Senior Engineering Manager to lead the next evolution of our security function, taking us beyond foundational protections and into mature, enterprise-grade resilience. You’ll take ownership of security engineering while helping shape broader business risk, privacy, and IT management strategies across a fast-paced, regulated environment.

What will the role involve?

• Defining and executing a long-term security strategy that goes beyond foundational protections, targeting enterprise-grade resilience.

• Leading and growing a high-impact security engineering team, embedding security into engineering, product and infrastructure at scale.

• Owning end-to-end vendor and workforce security processes, including onboarding, offboarding, and software procurement.

• Collaborating across teams to manage risks related to data privacy, regulatory compliance (e.g. GDPR), and IT operations.

• Driving readiness for security certifications such as future ISO 27001 compliance, as well as maintaining existing frameworks (SOC 2, PCI DSS, GDPR etc.)

• Acting as the key decision-maker for infrastructure security tooling and cloud security practices, ideally with deep AWS experience.

What are we looking for?

• Proven leadership in scaling security functions within fast-growing, regulated industries

• Ideally experience or understanding of payments or eCommerce.

• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and change, managing stakeholders inc. c-suite.

• Hands-on experience with modern security standards and frameworks (SOC 2, PCI DSS, GDPR), with foresight into ISO 27001 readiness.

• A background in IT security management, with the ability to own workforce, device, and vendor risk processes.

• Strong grasp of cloud infrastructure security (preferably AWS) and how to operationalise it in production environments.

• Strategic mindset with the ability to elevate a security team from great to world-class

• Experience hiring and growing teams a must.

You may not like it here if:

• You enjoy working in an office-setting, we are remote-first and always will be!

• You are not comfortable with shifting context and navigating ambiguity

• You don’t enjoy testing your code, we have no testers or QA’s here at Primer

Our interview process

• 30 minute call with a Talent Partner

• 45 minute interview with an Engineering Manager

• 60 minute technical conversation with the team

• 60 minute final stage interview

What’s the culture like at Primer?

We’re building a culture where people can come and do their best work and enjoy it. We want our people to be proud of the impact that they have at Primer, and of the work that they are doing. You will be working with a team of people who are mission-driven, smart, and reflective, and who are invested in building exceptional products and delivering success for our merchants (and we also know how to have fun along the way).

We work remotely. We believe that building a successful, profitable company goes beyond proximity. We invest in our relationships with each other through great remote working practices and thoughtfully designed face-to-face time together. Our heads-together time comes in the form of workstations, our annual company retreat, and co-working space access worldwide.

Finally, let’s go ahead and say it. The work that we do is challenging. Startups are a challenge, building category defining products is a challenge. You should be prepared for a challenge at Primer. But, there’s a big difference between a challenge and a struggle. The key difference is that the right challenge comes with the right support structures, an acceptance that not everything always goes to plan, a collaborative environment, and a great team around you. It’s never a challenge that you will face alone.

Our benefits:

• We are fully remote

• Competitive share options

• Uncapped holiday, with 25 days minimum to be taken

• Co-working space access

• Workations & company retreat

• The best equipment for your role

• £500 towards your home office setup

• Generous learning budget

• Medical insurance

• A broad set of additional perks and benefits (depending on location)

Don’t meet every single requirement?

At Primer, we’re dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply. You may be the right candidate for this or other roles. Primer is committed to the equal treatment of all current and prospective employees, regardless of background or beliefs—see our diversity commitment statement for more details

Equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging policy

Primer adopts a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination.

We are committed to providing equal opportunities to all current and prospective employees regardless of age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, or marriage and civil partnership.