Cyber Assurance Lead; Cloud & AI

Position: Cyber Assurance Lead (Cloud & AI)
Security Assurance Lead - Cloud & AI

Permanent  |  Belfast or London (Hybrid)  |  SC Held or Eligible

Morela is hiring a Security Assurance Lead for a fast-growing UK sovereign AI scale-up. This is a permanent, full-time role, hybrid from either Belfast or London, reporting into the Security Lead. You will need to hold SC clearance or be eligible to obtain it. On offer is a competitive salary, pension, equity options and one of the most generous working patterns you will find anywhere.

About the Client

Our client builds a sovereign AI platform for organisations that can't compromise on security, including defence, national security, central government, policing and heavily regulated industries. They deliver real capability into some of the UK's most sensitive environments, so every feature is threat modelled, hardened and properly assured before it goes near customer data.

Security is central to the business and is now getting serious investment. The company is scaling a dedicated assurance function so it can assure fast without slowing delivery down, and this hire is one of the founding roles in it.

The Role

You will be the independent assurance voice across the business, covering the cloud estate, the corporate environment and the AI capability built into the platform. You will set the security baselines that Dev Ops, IT and Product Security Engineering build to, then prove those baselines are being met through continuous monitoring and independent testing. Self-attestation won't be accepted as proof.

The scope is wide and will keep growing. You will work with engineering, product, IT, commercial and leadership, and directly with customers, so the role suits someone curious and self-driven who wants a real hand in shaping how a security function grows and directly influencing new capability for defence.

Responsibilities

Help shape and deliver the overall security strategy, and play a key part in building out the assurance function as the business grows
Set the security baselines for cloud, IT and product teams, and verify compliance against them independently
Specify the evidence security testing needs to produce, and assure the processes and pipelines used to build the product
Embed, integrate and continually improve security tooling across the full SDLC
Independently test and verify platform-level AI controls, including prompt injection defences, agent permissions, provisioning guardrails and isolation, and own the baseline evidence pack
Produce AI risk assessments and security posture reporting aligned to ISO 42001, the EU AI Act and the Cyber Resilience Act
Support the running and upkeep of ISO 27001 and the wider enterprise compliance management systems
Champion good security practice across engineering teams

Essential Requirements

Hands-on experience implementing and maturing CNAPP tooling such as Wiz
Practical cloud security experience on at least one major hyperscaler, with a solid grasp of infrastructure, cloud and application security
A track record of building assurance through continuous monitoring or automated evidence collection
Experience running, auditing and developing ISO-based management systems, alongside broader governance, risk and compliance work
Working knowledge of NIST frameworks
Practical use of AI security and control frameworks such as the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs and MITRE ATLAS
A drive to deliver rigorous assurance quickly and at scale
SC clearance, or eligibility to obtain it

Desirable Experience

CISSP and/or CCSP certification
ISO 42001 implementation, audit or certification experience
Hands-on security testing of LLM applications or agentic AI systems
Python or other scripting used in a security context
Compliance-as-code or machine-readable compliance formats such as OSCAL

Working Environment

Permanent, full-time, hybrid from Belfast or London
Competitive salary, company pension and equity options in a high-growth scale-up
A working pattern that gives back around 30 extra days a year on top of annual leave, with full four-day weeks over the summer and December, regular paid Fridays off and early Friday finishes
Cutting-edge AI tools used as everyday working kit
A delivery-first culture that values impact over optics and people over politics, with real influence on how the business runs as it grows
Interested? Get in touch with Adam Moore at  with your CV and current availability