Senior Security & Cyber Operations Manager (Financial Services)

Role: Senior Security and Cyber Operations Manager
Location: Corporate Offices / Hybrid (UK)
Industry: Financial Services / Insurance (Regulated Environment)
Type: Full-Time, Permanent
Senior Security & Cyber Operations Manager | Operations, Incident Response & AI Innovation

• End-to-end operational ownership of enterprise security operations (SOC), incident response, threat detection, and cyber defence capabilities.
• Drive detection engineering, SOAR automation, and AI integration across cloud, hybrid infrastructure, endpoints, and third-party services.
• Key focus: Incident leadership, MSSP/vendor management, response playbooks, metrics (MTTD/MTTR), and executive risk governance.

About the Opportunity
A leading UK financial services organisation is seeking a high-performing Senior Security and Cyber Operations Manager to lead, mature, and optimize its end-to-end security operations and cyber defence ecosystem.
Reporting directly to the CISO, you will act as the organizational subject matter expert for incident response, threat monitoring, and operational cyber risk. In this hands-on leadership role, you will bridge the gap between real-time threat telemetry and executive risk decision-making—ensuring security events are rapidly detected, contained, remediated, and learned from. You will also lead the vendor management of external MSSP partners while leveraging AI, SOAR, and intelligent data enrichment to build a modern, high-velocity SOC function.
Key Accountabilities

• End-to-End Cyber Defence Ownership: Lead the complete operational lifecycle across SIEM, SOAR, EDR, NDR, and identity telemetry—covering monitoring, alert triage, incident containment, root-cause eradication, and post-incident learning.
• Major Incident Response & Crisis Leadership: Act as the operational escalation point during major security events; lead crisis containment strategies, evidence collection, regulatory reporting, and executive updates.
• AI, SOAR & Continuous Improvement: Champion the practical application of AI, orchestration, and automated triage to reduce alert fatigue, minimize false positives, streamline investigations, and accelerate response playbooks.
• Vendor & MSSP Governance: Own relationships with external managed security service providers (MSSPs), threat intelligence vendors, and incident response retainers, ensuring SLA compliance, delivery quality, and value alignment.
• Cross-CIO Collaboration: Work across Engineering, Cloud, Data, and Architecture to embed threat detection models, logging standards, and incident playbooks directly into operational pipelines.
• Governance & Executive Metrics: Define and maintain core performance metrics (MTTD, MTTR, telemetry health, alert fidelity) and deliver actionable reporting for CISO, Risk Committee, and Board discussions.

Required Skills & Experience

• Enterprise Operations Leadership: Proven track record managing SOC, cyber defence, or incident response functions in complex, regulated environments (Financial Services/Insurance preferred).
• Technical Depth in Security Tooling: In-depth knowledge of SIEM, SOAR, EDR/XDR, NDR, threat intelligence platforms, and telemetry architectures across cloud and hybrid environments.
• Incident Management Mastery: Demonstrable experience leading major security incidents, assessing severity, defining containment strategies, and executing post-incident root-cause remediation.
• MSSP & Partner Management: Direct experience governing external managed security service providers and third-party incident response retainers.
• AI & Automation Focus: Practical understanding of applying AI, machine learning, or SOAR playbooks to automate security workflows and enrich threat triage.
• Executive Stakeholder Communication: Ability to translate complex technical cyber incidents into clear business risk impact and pragmatic recommendations for senior leadership.