Lead Security Engineer (Interim Contract up to 12 months)

Hybrid – London/Newcastle Upon Tyne

We’re Perenna, a digital mortgage bank that is revolutionising the UK mortgage market. We offer flexible fixed rate mortgages, with terms ranging from 15 years up to 40 years, providing full payment certainty and protecting borrowers against interest rate rises.

This is the most exciting point in our history (so far!) as we move into our second year post-launch into the mortgage market. We’re looking for an experienced senior security professional, to join us on an interim basis as we add capacity to our technology team over the next phase of our growth.

What you’ll be doing.

This role will act as a senior subject matter expert in security, leading in some areas and working with colleagues across the technology department at Perenna. The key things you will be responsible for are:

• Conducting due diligence on third parties and assessing their responses to information security requirements
• Contributing to the security requirements for consideration during architectural design and review processes
• Designing solutions as needed to meet security demands
• Reviewing and approving requests for new software or hardware within Perenna's environment, considering their suitability for our regulatory environment. This will include security, infrastructure management and deployment.
• Proactively monitoring and triaging logs and security information
• Managing the deployment of SIEM components
• Responding to security incidents and carrying out containment actions as per Perenna processes
• Managing security incidents end to end as per information security incident management processes
• Performing general day to day security activity, such as vulnerability scans, patch management, configuration compliance and general security monitoring
• Network security (physical and cloud)
• Contributing to security policy and implement security policy and procedures
• Act as an SME to other engineers across platform and security

Your skills and experience.

Here’s what you can bring to this role:

• Proven and relevant experience working in cyber security, where you can show experience using a range of security technologies such as firewalls, SIEM, endpoint protection, and vulnerability scanning tools.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills – you’ll communicate complex security concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, so getting this done effectively will have a positive impact on the whole business.
• A background working in start-up or scale-up businesses, used to working at a fast pace with changing priorities
• Previous exposure to Azure and Microsoft 365 technologies
• Strong experience with networking concepts (physical networking, cloud networking and security devices)
• Experience with Azure security e.g. Front Door would be advantageous
• Experience in Financial Services or another regulated industry would be advantageous

We are positive, energetic, and focussed as a team, and we enjoy finding pragmatic ways to do new things that change the status quo. We value transparency and collaboration, and we like to own outcomes but share successes. If these are the kind of behaviours that you value in your colleagues, you will enjoy the pace and style of work we do here. It’s a dynamic place to work – we’re fewer than 80 people, and everyone gets stuck in to whatever needs to be done to achieve our goals.

Things you should know.

Our selection processes are quick, but thorough. After a short initial chat to get some extra information about you, you'll have 2 interviews, one focussed on your skills and experience, and another looking more closely at what you value and how you’ll add to our culture.

We're a regulated bank, so if you're successful, our pre-hiring process will include ID verification, a DBS records check, adverse credit checks (not scoring) and some employment history referencing before your start date is confirmed.

All applicants need to be fully eligible to work in the UK without any restrictions. We can't support Visa sponsorship.

The fantastic people we have here at Perenna come from a very wide range of backgrounds and communities, but we all share the same belief that mortgages should be better, and we all want to make that happen together. We’re passionate and proud of our unique proposition, our products and our mission. We collaborate and we support each other, and our culture is inclusive and open. Diversity of all kinds is valued and respected here, and whatever your background, your voice will be heard. That’s not just because it’s the right thing to do – we believe our diversity makes us better for our customers and helps us think big about our goals. If you need any accommodation or adjustment to participate in our selection process, please let us know, and we’ll make it happen.

Got questions?

Send them to us at and we will be more than happy to help!