Security Engineer – Cybersecurity / IAM

Security Engineer – Cybersecurity / IAM

Location: Hybrid - Office Locations in London/Birmingham/Sheffield. Travel/Onsite when required.

Contract Role: 6 Months (possible extensions)

Rate: £500-£650 Inside IR35

Essential Consulting are working with a large Financial Services client who are looking for an experienced Lead Design Engineer to join a large-scale technology and cybersecurity environment, with a particular focus on Identity & Access Management (IAM), HashiCorp Vault and secrets management.

You will take ownership of end-to-end solution design, translating business and technical requirements into robust architecture and high-level designs. Working across architecture, engineering, cybersecurity and programme teams, you will provide technical leadership and present solutions through design authorities and senior stakeholder forums.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and maintain end-to-end solution designs aligned to business requirements and reference architecture.

• Translate business and technical requirements into effective, timely and cost-conscious solution architectures.

• Produce high-level designs, architecture patterns and design decision records, ensuring clear and transparent decision-making.

• Identify, document and gain approval for design deviations and technical debt.

• Identify and manage technical risks, issues and dependencies, defining appropriate remediation and mitigation.

• Ensure architecture artefacts undergo appropriate peer review and governance before approval.

• Present and defend solutions through technical design authorities and senior stakeholder forums.

• Provide technical thought leadership across cybersecurity, IAM, secrets management and workload identity.

• Provide technical direction across architects, engineers and analysts, supporting wider programmes where required.

What We're Looking For

You will have strong experience within cybersecurity solution design or architecture, ideally gained within a large, complex financial services or enterprise technology environment.

We are particularly interested in candidates with:

• 3+ years' HashiCorp Vault experience, ideally on-premise.

• 3+ years' HashiCorp Terraform experience, including designing and building complex modules.

• Strong experience with Vault integrations, Secret Engines and Authentication Methods.

• Experience designing or implementing Workload Identity frameworks within large enterprises.

• Strong knowledge of Identity & Access Management (IAM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM).

• Knowledge of Kerberos, OAuth, SAML, SSO and federated identity management.

• Experience defining or influencing secrets management strategy and future direction.

• Experience investigating complex Vault integration issues and developing robust, reusable patterns.

• Strong understanding of enterprise and solution architecture, including architectural governance.

• Experience across operational and transformation cybersecurity environments and large-scale technology transformation programmes.

• High proficiency and expertise in Jira for project and task management, alongside working proficiency in Confluence.

• A background in cybersecurity, computer science, software engineering or a related discipline, through relevant professional experience or qualifications.

• CISSP, CISM, SABSA or TOGAF certification would be advantageous.

Broader cybersecurity experience across areas such as security operations, threat and vulnerability management, infrastructure, networks, applications, data or cloud security would also be beneficial.