VP, Security Operations

Sportradar AG; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Sportradar AG in London is seeking a hands-on senior leader to run Security Operations end to end, including the SOC, incident response, detection engineering and threat intelligence, reporting to the EVP, Information Security.

You will shape the incident response program, build and scale a SOC, drive engineering discipline, and partner with engineering and product security to deliver defensible, high‑reliability security across our cloud estate.

Qualifications

• Deep incident response experience with hands-on leadership.
• Built or rebuilt a SOC with modern operating models and tooling.
• Strong cloud security grounding across AWS, GCP, and Azure.
• Experience in detection engineering and automation.
• Operational threat intelligence capability.
• Proven track record leading globally distributed teams.
• Hands-on SIEM/Data Lake implementation and support.
• Experience mitigating DDoS and performing threat hunts.

Responsibilities

• Own and lead incident response, from preparation to post-incident reviews.
• Evolve and scale the SOC, on-call structure, tooling, and automation.
• Treat detections as code, map to real threats, and drive coverage roadmap.
• Build an intel capability to inform hunts, detections, and leadership briefings.
• Be the voice of operational reality to ensure defensible security.
• Define and improve measures: detection coverage, MTTD/MTTC, escalation effectiveness.

Skills

Incident response leadership

SOC build/rebuild

Cloud security (AWS/GCP/Azure)

Detection engineering

Threat intelligence

Global technical leadership

SIEM / data lakes

DDoS mitigation

Threat hunting / purple teaming

Job description

We’re the world’s leading sports technology company, at the intersection between sports, media, and betting. More than 1,700 sports federations, media outlets, betting operators, and consumer platforms across 120 countries rely on our know-how and technology to boost their business.

Job Description

Sportradar· Global · Reports to the EVP, Information Security (Group CISO), Privacy and Enterprise Risk

This is a hands‑on leadership role. You need to be technical, in the detail, and able to lead an incident bridge. You will run a global function and own Security Operations end to end: the SOC, incident response, detection engineering and threat intelligence, along with the people and platforms behind them.

THE CHALLENGE:

• Own incident response.
  • Preparation, triage, containment, eradication, and the post‑incident reviews that make the next incident smaller. You will lead major incidents personally and set the standard for what good looks like.
• Build the SOC we need next, not the one we have.
  • Evolve the operating model, the on‑call structure, the tooling and the automation. You will have built a SOC before, either from scratch or through a major rebuild.
• Treat detection engineering as an engineering discipline.
  • Detections as code: versioned, tested, tuned, and mapped to the threats that actually target us rather than a vendor's default rule pack. You will drive the coverage roadmap across our cloud estate and applications, and you know the difference between a thousand alerts and one good one.
• Make threat intelligence earn its keep.
  • Build an intel capability that changes what we hunt for, what we detect, and what we brief to leadership.
• Be the voice of operational reality.
  • At the leadership table, you are the person who knows what is happening on the ground, and says so. You will work closely with engineering, product security and the wider InfoSec leadership so that what we build is defensible and what we defend is understood.
• Own operational effectiveness.
  • Define and improve measures that matter: detection coverage, investigation quality, time to detect and contain, escalation effectiveness, and whether lessons from incidents get implemented.

ABOUT YOU:

• Deep, current incident response experience. You have personally led the response to serious incidents rather than observing them from a governance layer.
• You have built a SOC: stood one up, or rebuilt one that wasn't working. The operating model, the hiring, the tooling, the metrics. You know what the first 90 days look like because you have lived them.
• Technical, with a solid grounding in cloud. You understand how modern cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure) are attacked and defended, including identity, logging, lateral movement and containment, and how incident response works within them.
• Detection engineering experience. You have built or led detection programmes covering rule development, coverage mapping, tuning and automation, and you can review a detection and tell whether it is good.
• Threat intelligence experience. You have built or run an intel function and made it operational, feeding hunts, detections and decisions.
• A track record of leading globally distributed technical teams across time zones.
• Hands‑on experience with SIEM/Data Lakes, implementing and supporting.
• Experience with DDoS mitigation.
• Experience with threat hunting and purple teaming.

OUR OFFER

• A collaborative environment with colleagues from all over the world (Offices in Europe, Asia, North & South America).
• Impactful Work: Contribute to the development of groundbreaking products that influence industries globally.
• Ability to shape your own workday and career via a clearly defined professional and personal development plan.
• We are a diverse and collaborative global team with a unique spirit, determined to achieve our goals with integrity and focus.
• Opportunity to work with senior leadership, develop yourself and build your career within an inspiring and fast-growing company and digital sports environment.

While we appreciate the flexibility and benefits of working from home, we strongly believe that coming together in person fosters stronger connections, encourages collaboration, and drives innovation—both as individuals and as a company. The energy, shared ideas, and team support we experience in the office strengthen the foundation of our success and culture. For this reason, we are generally an office‑first business operating on a hybrid model, with team members working in the office four days a week to build relationships, exchange ideas, and grow together.