Senior Technical Product Manager

Valarian; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Competitive salary

Employer pension contributions

Private health insurance

Hybrid work setup

Company retreats

Job summary

Valarian Technologies is evolving a security-focused Kubernetes platform (ACRA) and seeks a Platform Operations Lead responsible for the end-to-end lifecycle of external engineering dependencies, security testing, and governance. You will bridge engineering leadership and external partners, turning complex security requirements into actionable priorities, metrics, and reliable, compliant delivery.

You will shape the operational product, balance risk and velocity, and drive remediation with

Qualifications

• Experience in secure or regulated environments preferred
• Understanding of zero-trust architecture and policy enforcement
• Experience delivering in a high-growth startup or scale-up environment

Responsibilities

• Own the Platform Security & Trust Roadmap: Define and prioritize capabilities, compliance requirements, and enhancements needed for zero-trust architecture and enterprise readiness.
• Define Technical Requirements & Specifications: Translate pentest findings, compliance mandates, and tech specs into clear user stories and API contracts.
• Lead Backlog Grooming & Vulnerability Prioritization: Prioritize remediation alongside new features based on risk, severity, and SLAs.
• Orchestrate External Security Engagements: Scope and run external pentests and third‑party security audits, track findings to re-testing and delivery.
• Manage External Technical Dependencies: Align third‑party integrations and vendor deliverables with platform release cycles.
• Balance Feature Velocity against Technical Risk: Evaluate trade-offs between delivery speed, effort, costs, and security boundaries.
• Track Security & Product Metrics: Monitor time-to-remediation, security posture, vendor SLAs, and delivery predictability.
• Drive Product-Led Security Value: Act as product owner ensuring security, data sovereignty, and auditability as differentiators.

Job description

Valarian Technologies is a dual-use technology company building critical tools to safeguard the future in an era of evolving global security challenges. We're rethinking security beyond traditional military domains, addressing asymmetric threats that impact our technological advantage, economic strength, and democratic institutions.

We build Acra – the platform foundation for everything we do as a dual-use technology company. The platform’s name, rooted in the Greek word for citadel (or, fortress), reflects the design and purpose of our infrastructure-agnostic secure enclaves: protecting critical data. Some of the government and commercial workflows include: increased operational resiliency for mission-critical systems and functions; enabling organisations to more quickly and widely adopt emerging technologies while ensuring the integrity of their intellectual property; information flow during disaster response scenarios, and zero-trust / least-privilege environments for M&A, attorney-client privileged communications, etc. And we’ve only scratched the surface.

At our core, we're driven by a shared mission and a belief in making a tangible impact on our world. Whether you join our London HQ or the wider global organisation, you’ll be a part of collaborative, high-performing teams, creating cutting-edge software, platforms, and infrastructure.

The Role

You will lead the operational, delivery, and governance execution for Valarian’s platform engineering team, acting as the primary operational partner to the Head of Engineering. This role sits at the intersection of technical execution, Product and platform security for ACRA, our complex security-focused Kubernetes platform.

You will own the operational lifecycle of external engineering dependencies end to end: from scoping, scheduling, and managing third-party penetration testing to overseeing contractor budgets, statement of work (SOW) execution, and project billing. You will keep engineering operations financially sorted, compliant, and friction-free, ensuring that external technical deliverables align seamlessly with internal platform engineering cycles.

You will serve as the crucial interface between engineering leadership and external partners. You will translate complex security, infrastructure, and operational requirements into actionable engineering priorities, triaging pentest findings, managing vulnerability remediation workflows with engineers, and reporting clear status, risk, and spend metrics directly to the Head of Engineering.

This is not a role for someone who only wants to manage spreadsheets or pass messages. We are looking for someone who understands the technical product vision, challenges assumptions, and turns complex operational challenges into smooth, reliable systems.

As Valarian grows, this role offers a clear path to increasing operational ownership and strategic influence. We are looking for strong operational judgement, curiosity, ownership, technical fluency, and the ability to bring order to complex environments.

What you’ll do:

• Own the Platform Security & Trust Roadmap: Define and prioritize the product capabilities, compliance requirements, and technical enhancements needed to maintain ACRA’s zero-trust security architecture and enterprise readiness.
• Define Technical Requirements & Specifications: Translate pentest findings, compliance mandates (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC 2), and technical specs into clear user stories, acceptance criteria, and API contracts for engineering.
• Lead Backlog Grooming & Vulnerability Prioritization: Drive product discovery and backlog refinement with engineering, prioritizing vulnerability remediations alongside new feature delivery based on risk, severity, and customer SLAs.
• Orchestrate External Security Engagements: Scope and run external penetration tests and third-party security audits as structured product validation cycles, tracking findings through to re-testing and delivery.
• Manage External Technical Dependencies: Align third-party integrations, vendor deliverables, and partner APIs with core platform release cycles to ensure unblocked delivery.
• Balance Feature Velocity against Technical Risk: Partner with engineering, product, and leadership to evaluate trade-offs between delivery speed, engineering effort, financial costs, and platform security boundaries.
• Track Security & Product Metrics: Monitor key product health indicators—including time-to-remediation, security posture compliance, vendor SLA performance, and feature delivery predictability.
• Drive Product-Led Security Value: Act as a product owner in a fast-paced startup, ensuring platform security, data sovereignty, and auditability serve as key competitive differentiators for Valarian.

Nice to have:

• Experience in secure or regulated environments, such as defence, government, fintech, critical infrastructure, or sovereign cloud.
• Understanding of zero-trust architecture, identity-aware systems, policy enforcement, or workload isolation concepts.
• Experience managing technical delivery in a high-growth startup or scale-up environment.

Again: these are not requirements. They are areas you may get to work with and go deeper into at Valarian.

Benefits:

Our benefits are designed to ensure our employees feel taken care of and are proud to be a part of the Valarian team. We are committed to consistently enhancing our benefit package, taking into account the overall well-being and needs of our teammates. Here are the key benefits accessible to all employees at Valarian Technologies:

• Equity – because you have the right to own what you’re building
• A competitive salary – because we value your unique skills
• Employer pension contributions – because you deserve a secure future
• Private health insurance - because your health is important to us
• Hybrid work setup – because everyone has different needs
• Rewarding company retreats and meetups that respect your work/life balance – because we love getting to know each other!

Life at Valarian

Our culture is built on inclusivity, compassion and flexibility – we want everyone to be empowered to achieve their goals at Valarian.

The work we do is vital, but so are the connections that make it happen. We thrive on the shared energy, spontaneous conversations, and mutual trust built when we spend time together. We operate on a hybrid model, gathering in our London office 3 days a week to support one another and collaborate.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

Valarian Technologies Limited is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applications from invdividuals regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran, amnesty, or any other legally protected characteristic.

We are committed to ensuring a fair and inclusive recruitment process and providing employment opportunities to all applicants.