Principal Enterprise Security Architect

About the Role

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is seeking a Principal Enterprise Security Architect to lead cyber security design and assurance for national‑scale Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) programmes. The role requires expertise in enterprise security architecture frameworks, cloud and IT technologies, risk mitigation and relevant certifications such as CISSP or CISM, while collaborating with senior stakeholders and ensuring alignment with NPL’s security strategy and compliance with government and industry standards.

This role will be responsible for the overall cyber security design, development and delivery across strategic PNT programmes. It will deliver assurance relating to activities of high complexity and risk, making decisions that enable NPL to achieve its goals within its risk appetite.

The Principal Enterprise Security Architect will lead the Cyber Security pillar within the PNT Technical Design Authority, overseeing the implementation of solutions to ensure technology and digital solutions align with the enterprise security roadmap.

This specialist position reports to the head of NPL’s Cyber Security Team, part of the NPL CIO function, helping to provide day‑to‑day information risk consultancy, advice and guidance for all of NPL. It also supports prioritisation of risk mitigation activities, tracking of risk tolerance and reporting while supporting the design and implementation of the assurance framework.

• Lead the cyber security architecture and design function across NPL’s PNT programmes to deliver at National Scale
• Oversee the design, delivery and operation of Cyber Operational capability dedicated to NPL’s PNT programmes
• Develop an enterprise architecture and guiding principles for the PNT programmes that align with NPL’s security strategy
• Communicate with senior stakeholders (across NPL and UK Government) and define the vision, principles and strategy for security architecture
• Work alongside the Enterprise Architecture team to provide a consolidated and aligned architectural position to guide NPL in the safe use of IT technologies and systems
• Lead the technical cyber security design of systems and services across multiple PNT programmes and projects / technologies, up to an organisational or inter‑organisational level
• Make and influence important business and architectural decisions
• Research, identify, validate and adopt new security technologies and methodologies that help NPL achieve its business objectives
• Research and apply innovative security architecture solutions to new or existing problems, and justify and communicate design decisions
• Lead the engagement with NPL’s customers within both the UK Government and the private sector on security risk and architectural decisions
• Understand the impact of decisions, balancing requirements and deciding between approaches based on the business requirements and risk appetite of NPL
• Identify and communicate current and emerging threats, whilst designing security architecture elements to provide mitigation against those threats
• Maintain an understanding of the emerging threat profile, work with the wider team to contextualise this threat in terms of NPL’s own business and delivered programmes, and ultimately develop a prioritised mitigation strategy; develop a security posture that delivers this mitigation through technical implementation, operating procedures and business processes

• Referenceable, in‑depth knowledge and experience in Cyber Security and IT; including business process design
• Ability to work with Enterprise Security Architecture frameworks (SABSA / TOGAF)
• Designing and constructing business processes, functions and organisational structures using appropriate tools/models
• Significant knowledge of cloud architecture and integration technologies
• Understanding of IT, networking and virtualisation technologies
• Proven ability to define architecture roadmaps, associated strategies, including design analysis
• In‑depth assessment of IT systems, cloud offerings (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS), services and IT Security controls to provide an independent view of their compliance and effectiveness with…