Salary: £45,272 to £56,844 per annum (dependent on skills and experience)
Band: UKRI Band E
Contract Type: Open Ended – Permanent (Compressed hours & flexible working patterns available)
Hours: Full-time (flexible working available)
Location: Polaris House, Swindon or Harwell, Didcot – Hybrid working available
Closing Date: Sunday 11th October 2026
Step into the world where science meets robust information security. Protect the technology that powers ground-breaking discoveries and be part of the team that safeguards the future of Big Science. Here, you’ll collaborate with leading engineers, researchers, and technologists to tackle the most pressing security challenges in a fast-paced, innovative environment. Every day offers you the chance to defend vital data and systems, ensuring that the pursuit of scientific excellence continues securely and seamlessly.
Discover the difference you can make when you bring your expertise in information security to an organisation at the forefront of global research – working alongside some of the brightest minds and most advanced facilities in the world.
Security
As a minimum, due to the nature of this role, candidates must be eligible for clearance in line with UK National vetting guidelines and willing to undertake the process. Please indicate eligibility in the written submission. Candidates not meeting this level of clearance will not be considered.
The level of clearance required is security check.
About the role
The UKRI CIO Group plays a pivotal role in leading and optimising the organisations critical enterprise technical services that underpin and enable UKRI’s business capabilities. Within the group a team of Information Security Experts support the delivery of modern, secure, resilient and scalable services across a larger federated team of Digital, Data and Technology professionals to deliver impact across the organisation and the wider UK research and innovation system.
Join us for this rare opportunity to apply your experience in offensive security and threat intelligence in a dynamic, fast-paced security operational and strategic role in an organisation at the heart of research and innovation in the UK. Leading the Red Team of penetration testers your broad remit is to identify real-world risks to diverse technical landscapes, uncovering security vulnerabilities, actively exploiting findings, assessing additional impacts through post-exploitation, and providing proactive advice to teams on the most effective remediation strategies. The role encompasses the full scope and delivery of penetration testing, including closed-box network assessments, insider threat evaluations, credentialed application exploitation, thorough testing of human and physical security controls across the UKRI estate. In addition to these offensive security responsibilities, the specialist leads the external penetration testing call‑off contract to ensure that UKRI receives high-quality, tailored assessments both internally and externally, supporting a continuous programme of security improvement.
Your responsibilities:
- Complete targeted penetration tests and red team exercises to identify exploitable vulnerabilities.
- Develop and maintain offensive tooling to simulate adversary tactics and techniques.
- Monitor and analyse threat intelligence feeds to identify emerging threats and relevant TTPs.
- Produce technical threat reports and briefings to inform security posture and decision‑making.
- Conduct proactive threat hunting based on intelligence‑led hypotheses and anomaly detection.
- Support risk assessments with insights from offensive operations and threat landscape analysis.
About you
- Significant hands‑on professional experience delivering penetration testing and/or red‑team activity across enterprise environments (S&I).
- Deep technical capability across mixed technology environments, including operating systems, networking, identity/authentication, and cloud platforms (e.g. Azure and/or AWS) (S&I).
- Demonstrable proficiency using common offensive security tools and techniques (e.g. Nmap, Burp Suite, Metasploit) to identify and exploit real‑world attack paths (S&I).
- Ability to adapt quickly to new technologies, vulnerabilities, and offensive security techniques (S&I).
- Proven ability to produce clear, high-quality penetration testing reports that articulate risk, impact, and remediation for technical and non‑technical audiences (I).
- Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with sound professional judgement when assessing security weaknesses and advising on pragmatic remediation (I).
- Evidence of continued professional development in offensive security, demonstrated through relevant certifications, structured training, or equivalent practical experience (S&I).
We recognise and value our employees as individuals and aim to provide a favourable pay and rewards package! We are committed to supporting employees’ development and promote a culture of continuous learning! A list of benefits below;
- 30 days’ annual leave in addition to 10.5 public and privilege days. (full time equivalent)
- Employee discounts and offers on retail and leisure activities.
- Employee assistance programme, providing confidential help and advice.
- Flexible working options.
Please click here for more details on the https://www.discover.ukri.org/benefits-of-working-at-ukri/index.html
Please note, if you will require sponsorship to work in the UK, as part of your sponsorship application, you and any dependants travelling with you, will be required to pay costs directly to The Home Office for the application before you start your role with us. UKRI is normally able to reimburse some, or all of these fees after you have become an employee and this can be discussed with the Hiring Manager. For more information, please visit https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa/how-much-it-costs or contact Recruitment@ukri.org.
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