Head of Product Security - CISO function - BPL

Head of Product Security - BPL CISO

Product Security CISO Function

Role Purpose

The Head of Product Security 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 - 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.

Key Responsibilities

• 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.

Key Deliverables

• 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.

Required Skills and Experience

• CSSLP, OSCP or similar certifications.
• Experience with PCI Software Security Framework (SSF) and its application to payment processing software.
• 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.
• Payments acquiring, FinTech, E-Pay - application security experience.
• 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.