Head of Product and Identity Security

ABOUT THE TEAM:

The Tide Security Engineering team is made up of three core areas: Product Security, Identity, and Threat Detection & Response.

Product Security (this role!) consists of application and cloud security experts. Their mission is to protect the products we build, covering everything from secure design reviews to threat modelling and penetration testing, ensuring security is embedded from the ground up.

Identity (this role!) is responsible for managing Tide's staff identity platform, ensuring that access to systems and infrastructure is secure, seamless, and aligned with modern security practices. The team uses strategies like zero trust, multi-factor authentication, and granular role-based access controls to safeguard our internal operations.

Threat Detection & Response focuses on protecting the company by building a robust detection and automation platform. We're proactive in our defence, constantly hacking ourselves to improve our security posture and staying ahead of emerging threats. Our goal is to make Tide resilient against the ever-evolving threat landscape.

While each area has its own focus, collaboration is key - it's why we share the same Slack channel and hold our standups together as one cohesive team, ensuring alignment and seamless communication across all security functions.

As the Head of Product and Identity Security, you'll own two of those three areas, reporting directly to the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and operating as a peer to the Head of Threat Detection & Response. The remit spans application security, penetration testing, cloud security, artificial intelligence (AI) security, secure architecture, identity, and vulnerability operations. You'll lead a global team across the UK, Eastern Europe, and India, and you'll stay close to the technology: this is a player-manager role, where credibility is earned by doing the work as well as directing it. This is a real opportunity to make an impact and have senior influence on the cyber resilience strategy at Tide.

ABOUT THE ROLE: 

As a Head of Product and Identity Security you will:

• Defining the product and identity security strategy in conjunction with the CISO and operationalising it into a funded, sequenced roadmap that the team can execute against.
• Leading, coaching, and growing a global team across the UK, Eastern Europe, and India; setting clear objectives; running regular 1:1s; and supporting career growth and progression.
• Owning application security end-to-end, from secure design reviews and threat modelling through to secure coding standards, tooling, and remediation of findings.
• Running the penetration testing programme across web, mobile and infrastructure, including internal testing and the management of external partners, and staying hands-on where it counts.
• Owning cloud security posture across our cloud estate, covering configuration, workload protection, detection coverage in partnership with Threat Detection & Response, and the guardrails that keep engineering fast and safe.
• Setting the approach to AI and agentic security, covering how models, agents and machine learning (ML) pipelines are designed, deployed, monitored and defended, and keeping that approach current as the technology moves.
• Owning secure architecture so that security requirements are embedded from the ground up in new products, platforms, and integrations rather than retrofitted.
• Owning Tide's staff identity platform and the wider identity and access management (IAM) roadmap, including zero trust, multi-factor authentication, role-based access control, and joiner, mover, and leaver processes.
• Standing up and running a rapid-response vulnerability operations capability, with clear service levels for triage and remediation, and tight integration with security operations (SecOps) and engineering.
• Facing off directly with executives, product leaders, and engineering leadership across the business; articulating risk, trade-offs, and investment cases in language each audience can act on.
• Delivering the security enablement and security champions programmes so engineering teams can move quickly without security becoming a bottleneck.
• Acting as a senior escalation point for product and identity security issues, including during high-severity incidents, working alongside Threat Detection & Response.
• Recruiting and onboarding new team members as the function scales, and building technical capability across the team through mentoring and structured upskilling.
• Owning performance management for the team, including feedback, development plans, and, where needed, managing underperformance.
• Defining and reporting the metrics that demonstrate whether the programme is working, including vulnerability ageing and remediation, coverage of secure design reviews, and the reach and effect of enablement activity.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:

• At least ten years of overall experience in cybersecurity, including at least five years in a comparable leadership role, ideally within a technology company or fintech.
• A background as a hands-on security engineer, ideally including application and/or mobile penetration testing, and the appetite to remain technical as a player-manager.
• Great knowledge of AI, agentic security, and ML, and a clear point of view on how to secure them in production.
• A strong grasp of threat modelling, and the ability to articulate risk credibly to both engineering and non-technical audiences.
• A proven track record of delivering successful security enablement and security champions programmes.
• Highly organized, with the ability to operationalize a programme and define strategy in conjunction with the CISO.
• Strong stakeholder management skills and the confidence to face off to executives in the business directly.
• Experience leading distributed teams across multiple countries and time zones.
• Excellent spoken and written communication skills.

Nice to have:

• Experience with identity providers (IdPs), privileged access management (PAM), and broader IAM tooling, such as Okta, Ping, and ConductorOne, or equivalents.
• Experience standing up a rapid-response vulnerability operations or remediation operations function and integrating it with SecOps.

WHAT YOU’LL GET IN RETURN: 

• Competitive Compensation -  competitive salary and share options
• Time Off – Generous annual leave on top of bank holidays.
• Parental Leave – Paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave to support your family journey.
• Sabbatical – Extended unpaid and paid leave options after completing milestone years with Tide.
• Access to salary sacrifice benefits – like Nursery (could save up to 47% on fees!) and Cycle to Work discounts
• Health Insurance – Comprehensive Private family insurance plan.
• Life & Accident Cover – Comprehensive accidental and life insurance protection.
• Mental Wellbeing – Access to therapy sessions, courses, meditations, and workshops.
• Retirement Planning – Build your retirement fund faster with Tide’s pension scheme on eligible earnings.
• Volunteering & Development Days – Paid days annually for volunteering or personal growth.
• Learning & Development – Annual budget for books, courses, coaching, and more.
• WOO (Work Outside the Office) – Work from abroad for up to 90 days annually.
• Home Office Setup – Contribution towards setting up your home office
• Laptop Ownership – Keep your old laptop and get a new one when it’s time for a replacement.
• Snacks & Meals – Daily breakfast spread with all-day coffee, tea, and juices.

TIDEAN WAYS OF WORKING

At Tide, we champion a flexible workplace model that supports both in-person and remote work to cater to the specific needs of our different teams. 

While remote work is supported, we believe in the power of face-to-face interactions to foster team spirit and collaboration. Our offices are designed as hubs for innovation and team-building, where we encourage regular in-person gatherings to foster a strong sense of community.