Senior Cyber Security Partner

Tesco UK  •  Welwyn Garden City  •  Hybrid  •  Full-Time  •  Permanent  •  Apply by 01-Oct-2025 About the role The position will be based at our Tesco Technology offices in London.
About the Security Partners team 
We are the trusted security advisors for Tesco Technology. Our purpose is to collaborate seamlessly with the product and engineering teams, leveraging our deep expertise in cyber security to design and implement robust, resilient solutions that protect our business and customers from cyber threats. We are a dynamic and expanding global team of 15+ experts, serving as the strategic link between the wider security group and software engineering teams that develop cutting-edge services at scale to support the retail business. Tesco Technology comprises of several technology domains with over 100+ teams, each entrusted with their own security. These teams enjoy significant autonomy, balanced by the responsibility to make customer-centric decisions and security. Rather than imposing controls through rigid processes and security gates, we empower these engineering teams to innovate by providing security guidance that helps them make informed decisions for Tesco. Encouragingly, these teams are enthusiastic partners in enhancing security, working more efficiently, and integrating security into every aspect of their ways of working. This collaborative approach sets us apart from traditional security teams. We proudly identify ourselves as Security Partners, not security police, emphasizing our role as the “trusted advisors” rather than enforcers.
Partners engage key people in engineering to make security contextual and frictionless. After all, security is a journey and there is no one-size-fits-all. 
Join the team and be part of this exciting journey! 
The Role
As a Senior Security Partner, you will transform the security maturity of key product areas and teams. You will be the face of security group for them. Everything you do is in the context of the product, roadmap, its risk acceptance level, the technology stack, and its architecture.
You build a comprehensive understanding of the threat landscape and its potential risks to the business. Through effective partnership, you engage the leadership to make well-informed decisions about security and privacy.
Being the trusted advisorAs enterprise applications become more distributed, adaptive to technological advancements, and run from hybrid infrastructure, teams need to navigate through different complexities and make key security decisions along the way. A trusted security advisor empowers teams to achieve scalable and sustainable security maturity throughout the SDLC (software development lifecycle) process. What is in it for you We’re all about the little helps. That’s why we make sure our Tesco colleague benefits package takes care of you – both in and out of work. Click Here to find out more!   

• Annual bonus scheme of up to 20% of base salary 
• Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (plus Bank holidays) 
• Private medical insurance 
• 26 weeks maternity and adoption leave (after 1 years’ service) at full pay, followed by 13 weeks of Statutory Maternity Pay or Statutory Adoption Pay, we also offer 4 weeks fully paid paternity leave 
• Free 24/7 virtual GP service, Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for you and your family, free access to a range of experts to support your mental wellbeing 
• Provide product and engineering teams with direction and guidance on all security matters. There is a whole security group to back you up, so it is not as scary as it sounds.
• Engage engineering leadership on security roadmap and oversee security posture of what they build.
• Co-own the security roadmap, discuss, prioritise, and co-develop plans for remediation for the product areas.
• Empower security champions to succeed and creating a strong feedback loop for improvements.
• Represent security in all product and architecture meet-ups. Be part of critical decisions about security.
• Oversee product security activities, from the early development of security requirements, architecture reviews, and threat modelling, to strengthening application security, mitigating supply-chain risks, securing secrets, pipelines, reviewing vulnerabilities, and infrastructure security.
• Perform security architecture reviews of third-party services.
• Identify acceptable risk levels and assist with action plan, policy, and procedural changes for risk mitigation.
• Adopt a risk-based approach and guide management in identifying business risks and potential impact to Tesco. Continuously seek both tactical and strategic solutions to enhance security.
• As the security expert for the product area, engage across the security group to strengthen controls across identification, protection, detection, response, and recovery.
• Oversee assurance activities like security testing, purple testing, assurance, auditing.
• Reduce security fatigue for engineering and provide faster feedback within existing developer workflows, not adding another tool for them to check.
• Empower the teams you work with, but also challenge the status-quo.
• As a senior member of the team, engage across the security group on new ideas and initiatives.
• Contribute to strengthen organisation standards and policies, develop cookbooks, secure patterns, take part in security research and tool evaluations.
• You are committed to continuous improvement, seizing opportunities, and inspire change for the team.
• Mentor others in the team and take part in enhancing their skills and career development.
• Possess experience across multiple sectors and have undertaken diverse roles in engineering and security. Demonstratable accomplishments of collaborating with leadership and management on security programmes and initiatives.
• Good knowledge of various security domains, and solid experience in architecture practices and design patterns – the technology might have changed but most of the security challenges have not.
• Experience in designing security and privacy controls with sound understanding of standards and regulation.
• Experience in threat modelling, attack trees, vulnerability chaining, applying MITRE ATT&CK framework.
• Good understanding of web applications, REST APIs, micro services, eventing, modern application frameworks, and mobile apps.
• Good understanding of software architecture, network topologies, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS (infrastructure as a service).
• Proficient in applying industry standards such as OWASP ASVS (Application Security Verification Standard), OWASP Top 10, CIS (Centre of Internet Security) controls and benchmarks.
• Experience with cloud native and hybrid architectures with an emphasis on containerised workloads and Kubernetes.
• Some development experience is always a plus - Java, cloud, Golang, python. You do not need to “be a developer” but we need you to understand the implications of security on engineering velocity.
• Degree in computer science / information systems or engineering field, or equivalent experience.
• Experience with regulations like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), PCI-DSS is desirable.
• Azure or AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud security certifications is desirable.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and leadership skills.

You will be responsible for You will need About us Our vision at Tesco is to become every customer's favourite way to shop, whether they are at home or out on the move. Our core purpose is ‘Serving our customers, communities and planet a little better every day’. Serving means more than a transactional relationship with our customers. It means acting as a responsible and sustainable business for all stakeholders, for the communities we are part of and for the planet.    We are proud to have an inclusive culture at Tesco where everyone truly feels able to be themselves. At Tesco, we not only celebrate diversity, but recognise the value and opportunity it brings. We're committed to creating a workplace where differences are valued, and make sure that all colleagues are given the same opportunities. We’re proud to have been accredited Disability Confident Leader and we’re committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. For further information on the accessibility support we can offer, please click here.    We’re a big business and we can offer a range of diverse full-time & part-time working patterns across our many business areas, which means that we can find something that works for you.  We work in a more blended pattern - combining office and remote working.  Our offices will continue to be where we connect, collaborate and innovate.  If you are applying internally, please speak to the Hiring Manager about how this can work for you - Everyone is welcome at Tesco.