Principal Security Architect & Engineering Lead

Overview

Job Role:

Principal Security Architect and Engineering Lead

Salary: £81,000 - £86,000 + 15% performance bonus

Working

Location:

Milton Keynes / London, Hybrid working

Employment Type:

Full Time, Permanent

At NHBC, we're committed to protecting the systems, services and data that support the UK house-building industry. As our Principal Security Architecture & Engineering Lead, you'll play a pivotal role in defining how security is embedded across our technology landscape, ensuring resilience, trust and confidence in everything we deliver.

This is a strategic leadership role with significant technical influence. Working closely with the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), you'll define and evolve our enterprise security architecture, establish secure‑by‑design principles and lead the engineering of security capabilities that protect our critical business services. You'll collaborate across architecture, engineering, infrastructure and delivery teams to ensure security is integrated into every stage of technology change.

If you're passionate about modern security architecture, cloud technologies, engineering excellence and influencing change at enterprise scale, we'd love to hear from you.

As Principal Security Architecture & Engineering Lead, you will:

• Partner with the CISO to define and deliver NHBC's enterprise security architecture, supporting critical business services and regulatory expectations.
• Establish and maintain security architecture principles, standards, patterns and control frameworks across on‑premises, cloud and third‑party environments.
• Provide security architecture leadership and governance through Architecture Design Authority and other technical governance forums.
• Develop and contribute to solution architectures, ensuring security requirements are built into designs from the outset.
• Define functional and non‑functional security requirements that support secure, resilient and scalable technology solutions.
• Champion secure‑by‑design practices across technology delivery, embedding consistent, proportionate and auditable security controls.
• Drive the adoption of Dev Sec Ops  practices, working through matrix leadership with engineering and delivery teams to integrate security throughout development pipelines.
• Partner with engineering, infrastructure and operational teams to design, implement and integrate security capabilities across the enterprise technology estate.
• Lead technical security risk assessments, design assurance and remediation activities to strengthen controls and reduce enterprise risk.
• Oversee the secure integration of third‑party services and remote access solutions, ensuring controls align with business criticality and risk appetite.
• Support cyber incident response and recovery by ensuring architectures enable effective detection, containment and rapid restoration of services.

We're looking for an experienced security leader who combines strategic thinking with deep technical expertise and a collaborative leadership style.

You'll bring:

• Proven experience defining and governing enterprise security architecture across complex technology environments, establishing principles, standards and security patterns that enable secure, resilient and scalable solutions.
• A strong track record of embedding secure‑by‑design principles and influencing architects, engineers, delivery teams and business stakeholders to deliver security as an integral part of technology change.
• Hands‑on experience designing, implementing and integrating enterprise security technologies across hybrid environments, including Microsoft platforms, Azure, AWS, SaaS and IaaS.
• Significant expertise across key security domains, including security governance, security operations and SIEM, network security, cloud security, identity and access management (IAM), vulnerability management and security assurance.
• Strong knowledge of modern security engineering practices, including Dev Sec Ops , CI/CD security, infrastructure as code, automated testing and continuous assurance within development pipelines.
• Experience working across large‑scale transformation programmes…