Senior Programme Manager - SOC (Government)

GCS; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading cybersecurity consultancy is seeking a Senior Programme Manager to drive the end-to-end delivery of a greenfield Security Operations Centre for a significant central government organization. The role demands extensive experience in building SOC capabilities and managing transformation within government settings, along with exceptional leadership and stakeholder management skills. This hybrid position offers a unique opportunity to shape cyber security at a national level.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience building SOC capabilities from scratch within UK Government or highly regulated environments.
• Proven leadership of large, multi-year transformation programmes.
• Strong understanding of SOC operations and cloud security.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategic planning and delivery of SOC build across multiple Statements of Work.
• Establish governance and provide confidence to senior stakeholders.
• Oversee creation of full SOC capabilities including analytics and automation.

Skills

Building SOC capabilities

Leadership of large transformation programmes

Stakeholder management

Understanding of SOC operations

CI/CD tooling

Communication skills

Job description

Senior Programme Manager – SOC Build (Greenfield Government SOC Programme)

Contract: 2+ Years
Location: UK Hybrid / Remote
Clearance: SC (or willing to obtain)
Sector: Central Government / Cyber Security
Programme Value: Multi-year, multi-million-pound SOC transformation programme

Role Summary

The Senior Programme Manager will lead the end-to-end delivery of a new greenfield Security Operations Centre (SOC) for a major central government organisation. This includes replacing legacy security services, modernising fragmented tooling, and delivering an integrated, end-to-end cyber capability across cloud-based digital platforms.

This role is suited to a senior delivery leader with deep experience building SOC capabilities from scratch within government or similarly regulated environments, and who can manage a complex supplier ecosystem, specialist SMEs, and multi-year SOW-based contracts.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead strategic planning, mobilisation, and delivery of the multi-year SOC build across several Statements of Work.
• Establish programme governance and provide confidence to senior stakeholders across technology, security, operations, and digital service delivery.
• Drive a transformation approach focused on a complete overhaul, not iterative improvement.

Greenfield SOC Build

• Oversee the creation of a full SOC capability including monitoring, incident response, digital forensics, analytics, and automation.
• Lead the consolidation and modernisation of a complex, fragmented tool and technology landscape.
• Ensure minimal disruption to operational delivery.

Security, Risk & Compliance

• Ensure the SOC architecture meets government‑grade requirements around cyber risk, personal data protection, service continuity, and regulatory compliance.
• Work with SMEs and technical architects to support safe integration of AI‑related tooling and align to emerging regulatory expectations.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Communicate progress, risks, and decisions across senior leadership groups.
• Ensure the programme aligns with cross‑government security principles and reuse‑first technology strategies.

Essential Experience

• Extensive experience building SOC capabilities from scratch within UK Government or highly regulated environments.
• Proven leadership of large, multi‑year transformation programmes (Multi‑millions).
• Strong understanding of SOC operations, technology stacks, cloud security, and monitoring platforms.
• Experience coordinating multi‑supplier ecosystems, including SME specialists.
• Expertise across multi‑cloud environments, CI/CD tooling, modern development pipelines, and security engineering best practices.
• Outstanding communication and stakeholder management skills.

Desirable

• Experience working in a central government digital or technology context.
• Understanding of identity services, user verification, or sensitive personal data environments.
• Familiarity with AI governance and security implications.

If interested, please apply and I will be in touch to set up a confidential conversation later today.