Head of Product Security - CISO Function – BPL
The Head of Product Security - BPL, leads the pillar responsible for ensuring everything the company builds and ships is secure by design. This is the most agile-facing pillar in the CISO function in BPL — it must embed into product squads without becoming a bottleneck, own the shift-left programme, manage the developer security toolchain, and provide assurance that releases meet the organisation’s security and compliance requirements. The role requires a blend of technical depth, developer empathy, and pragmatic risk management. The ideal candidate is someone who understands application security at a hands-on level, has run a security champions programme in an agile engineering organisation, and knows how to make security a service that engineering teams want to use rather than a gate they try to avoid. You will work more closely with engineering leadership than with regulators — this is a builder’s role, not an auditor’s role.
- Own and drive the shift-left security programme, ensuring security is integrated into the earliest stages of the software development lifecycle through threat modelling, secure design patterns, and automated tooling.
- Manage the security champions programme, recruiting, training, and supporting champions across all product squads
- Own the developer security toolchain (SAST, DAST, SCA, secrets scanning) and ensure it is integrated into all CI/CD pipelines with minimal developer friction and calibrated thresholds to avoid noise.
- Establish and operate the vulnerability management lifecycle, including scanning orchestration, triage, prioritisation, SLA assignment, remediation tracking, and exception management.
- Chair the weekly Vulnerability Review Board, making prioritisation decisions on critical and high-severity findings in collaboration with engineering leads.
- Define and publish the security engagement model for product and engineering teams, including trigger points (new service, new integration, pre-release), SLAs, and escalation paths.
- Oversee threat modelling for new services and major changes, ensuring threat models are completed before development progresses beyond initial design.
- Own the security sign-off process for production releases, providing risk-based release decisions (approved, approved with conditions, deferred, escalated) rather than binary pass/fail gates.
- Provide self-service security capabilities to product teams: threat model templates, security stories backlog, secure coding guides, and accessible tooling documentation.
- Produce security assurance reporting for the CISO, including vulnerability trends, SDLC integration metrics, champion programme health, and developer satisfaction with security.
- Collaborate with Security Architecture and Engineering on the “paved road” of secure defaults, patterns, and base images that product teams build upon.
- Manage and develop the Product Security team, balancing deep technical capability with developer relations skills.
- Security champions programme with training curriculum, monthly meetup cadence, and recognition framework.
- Developer security toolchain fully operational and integrated into 100% of CI/CD pipelines.
- Vulnerability management dashboard with SLA tracking, ageing analysis, and trend reporting.
- Product security engagement model document (trigger points, SLAs, outputs, escalation paths).
- Security release certification process with standardised decision framework.
- Monthly product security report for CISO (vulnerability trends, tooling adoption, champion coverage, developer satisfaction).
- Threat model register with completion tracking and findings remediation status.
- Secure coding standards documentation for all primary programming languages.
- Developer security training curriculum and workshop materials.
- CSSLP, OSCP or similar certifications.
- Experience with PCI Software Security Framework (SSF) and its application to payment processing software.
- Payments acquiring, FinTech, E-Pay - application security experience.
- Previous career as a software engineer or developer before moving into security — you understand the developer experience from the inside.
- Experience with bug bounty programme management.
- Contributions to open-source security tools, OWASP projects, or published security research.
- Experience with security tooling for Kubernetes-native applications.
- Several years of progressive experience in application security or product security, with a number of years in a leadership role managing a product security or AppSec team.
- Deep understanding of modern application security: OWASP Top 10, API security (REST, gRPC, GraphQL), microservices security, container security, and secure coding practices.
- Proven experience building and running a security champions programme in an agile engineering organisation
- Hands-on experience with SAST, DAST, SCA, and secrets scanning tools and their integration into CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or equivalent).
- Experience managing a vulnerability management programme with defined SLAs, exception processes, and stakeholder reporting across multiple engineering teams.
- Strong developer empathy — demonstrable ability to work with engineering teams as a partner, not an adversary. Ideally you have a software development background yourself.
- Experience operating a security function within agile or DevOps delivery models, including sprint-aligned engagement and security backlog management.
- Understanding of PCI DSS software security requirements and their practical application in a cloud-native, microservices environment.
- Experience with threat modelling frameworks (STRIDE, PASTA, attack trees) and their application to modern architectures.
- Strong communication skills for influencing engineering leadership, presenting to executives, and writing clear guidance for developers.
Barclays’ payments acceptance business provides critical infrastructure to the UK economy, processing billions of pounds of payments annually for both small businesses and domestic and international corporate clients.
In April 2025, we announced a long-term partnership with Brookfield Asset Management to grow and transform the payments acceptance business by broadening the range of services offered, enhancing the experience for both existing and prospective clients. Leveraging extensive client relationships and deep experience of UK payments, we will create an environment of continuous innovation - activated by Brookfield’s global private equity expertise in payments, technology, operational transformation and corporate carve-outs - to ensure the business is strategically positioned for long-term growth.
Barclays will invest approximately £400m in the new business, the majority of which will be incurred during the first three years. Performance-linked incentives will drive greater alignment between the partners, underpinning the long-term commitment to the transformation. Barclays and Brookfield will work to create a standalone entity over time, continuing to use the Barclaycard Payments (BPL) brand and acting as the sole payments acceptance services provider to Barclays’ clients for a minimum of ten years.
For more information on our partnership with Brookfield, please visit Barclays.com.
Purpose of the role
To provide specialist proactive and reactive investigative service in response to physical incidents, cyber security incidents, external fraud insider threats and criminal conduct.
Accountabilities
- Implementation of governance, risk and controls principles to inform risk assessment, identifying risks by adhering to the banks Risk and Control Framework and takes accountability in mitigating risk.
- Engagement with internal stakeholders and provide subject matter knowledge and expertise in investigative techniques across physical incidents, cyber security incidents, external fraud insider threats and criminal conduct.
- Contribution to and enhancement of an effective control environment, ensuring that processes, risks and controls are applied in way that achieves a good outcome for the bank and its customers/clients.
- Enhancement of processes, tools, and techniques for detecting, addressing and preventing fraud, using knowledge and understanding of fraud methodology and industry benchmarks.
- Identification and analysis of emerging insider threats and vulnerabilities in the banking industry, including security logs, alerts and suspicious activities, though assessments to detect and prevent insider threat behaviours. .
- Collaboration with external stakeholders, including law enforcement agencies, to provide technical support and guidance during investigations and legal proceedings. .
- Data management systems use, support and access for searching, extracting and formatting data to support the investigative processes. .
Director Expectations
- To manage a business function, providing significant input to function wide strategic initiatives. Contribute to and influence policy and procedures for the function and plan, manage and consult on multiple complex and critical strategic projects, which may be business wide..
- They manage the direction of a large team or sub-function, leading other people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business. Or for an individual contributor, they lead organisation wide projects and act as deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross functionally. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
- Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made outside of own function, offering significant input to function wide strategic initiatives.
- Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub-function.
- Escalates breaches of policies / procedure appropriately.
- Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence.
- Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate.
- Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives.
- Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up-to-date relevant sector / functional knowledge, and insight into external market developments / initiatives.
- Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations.
- Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or recommendations within own area.
- Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.
- Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/ businesses divisions.
- Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.
All Senior Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.
All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.
