Lead Design Assurance Practitioner

We are seeking a Lead Design Assurance Practitioner to lead our Design Assurance practice across all Cyber Architecture and Solutions security domains, including Cryptography and AI Security.

As the most senior independent reviewer, you will own the assurance methodology, review standards, and assurance register, and manage reviewer capacity against demand. You will be accountable for pre-production architecture review, technical consultation, and BAU design assurance.

Key responsibilities:

• Lead the Design Assurance practice of eight and own its capability plan across every Cyber Architecture and Solutions domain
• Issue binding go/no-go determinations on tools before production, and own the consequences when a programme with a committed date does not get the answer it wanted
• Approve the assurance methodology, review standards, and the Critical, High, Medium, and Low classification scheme, and defend both under audit
• Verify against architecture standards set elsewhere in Cyber Architecture and Solutions and write none of them
• Manage reviewer capacity and tiering so high-risk designs get full review and low-risk change moves through pattern-based self-attestation with sampling
• Assure vendor-delivered designs to exactly the same standard as internally delivered ones
• Own pre-production architecture review, technical consultation, and BAU design assurance across the estate
• Feed recurring findings back to the architecture domains as standards gaps rather than reviewing the same defect repeatedly
• Own assurance throughput, turnaround, first-time-pass, and defect escape metrics, and defend them under challenge
• Lead the practice's response to internal audit and regulatory inspection

Basic Qualifications:

• 15+ years in cyber security, including leading technical or specialist teams
• Leading an independent design assurance practice
• Protecting independence from architecture under programme pressure
• Sponsoring automation of review intake, evidence capture, drift checks, and reporting

Preferred Qualifications:

• Architecture literacy to challenge senior architects' designs without owning the standards
• Evidencing assurance to internal audit and regulators
• Developing and leading a team of senior reviewers and analysts
• Executive stakeholder influence
• Experience defending an assurance opinion to an audit committee or a regulator