Lead Cryptography Engineer - #2160060

Lead Cryptography Engineer

Location: Leeds, UK

Workplace: Hybrid – 2 days per week from the office

Role Overview

We are looking for an experienced Lead Cryptography Engineer to lead the engineering capability for Key Management services within the Chief Security Office's Cryptography Lab.

You will take accountability for the end-to-end operational health, reliability, and continuous improvement of Key Management services. You will provide technical leadership and direction to a team of engineers, ensuring services are designed, built, and operated in line with security policies, regulatory expectations, and audit requirements.

Working closely with Product Owners, Risk, Compliance, and Audit stakeholders, you will drive improvements in engineering effectiveness, service resilience, and delivery predictability while maintaining strong control discipline across cryptographic operations and ceremonies, including HSM lifecycle management.

You will play a key role in strengthening the technical and operational maturity of the platform, coaching teams to improve design quality, operability, and maintainability, and fostering a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and engineering excellence in a high-trust, high-risk environment.

Key Responsibilities

Engineering Leadership

• Provide senior engineering leadership and accountability for delivery and operational outcomes.
• Lead and develop engineering teams through coaching, mentoring, and performance management.
• Set technical direction and drive engineering effectiveness across Key Management services.
• Promote strong engineering practices, collaboration, continuous learning, and operational excellence.

Key Management & Cryptography

• Lead the evolution of enterprise Key Management services.
• Apply strong understanding of Key Management concepts, cryptographic controls, and Key Management operating models.
• Maintain strong control discipline across cryptographic operations and ceremonies.
• Support the effective management of HSM lifecycles and related operational practices.
• Embed crypto-agility principles into the evolution of enterprise cryptographic services.

DevOps, Reliability & Operational Excellence

• Apply modern DevOps engineering practices to cryptographic and Key Management services.
• Drive the design and operation of scalable, secure, resilient, and adaptable platforms.
• Improve service reliability, operational maturity, and maintainability across the full lifecycle.
• Ensure services demonstrate appropriate resilience and high availability.
• Drive continuous improvement in engineering effectiveness and delivery predictability.

Security, Risk & Compliance

• Ensure services are designed, built, and operated in accordance with security policies and regulatory expectations.
• Maintain embedded security and control requirements throughout the service lifecycle.
• Work closely with Risk, Compliance, and Audit stakeholders.
• Support audit requirements and ensure appropriate controls are maintained across cryptographic operations.

Stakeholder & Product Collaboration

• Work closely with Product Owners and stakeholders to contribute to prioritisation and trade-off decisions.
• Build strong relationships across engineering, risk, compliance, audit, and business teams.
• Communicate technical and operational considerations clearly to stakeholders.
• Influence decisions that improve service resilience, security, and delivery outcomes.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Senior engineering leadership experience with accountability for delivery and operational outcomes.
• Strong understanding of Key Management concepts, cryptographic controls, and Key Management operating models.
• Experience leading the evolution of enterprise Key Management services.
• Understanding or experience applying crypto-agility principles.
• Strong knowledge of modern DevOps engineering practices.
• Experience leading, coaching, and developing engineering teams.
• Strong understanding of modern engineering practices and their application in high-risk, regulated environments.
• Ability to work closely with Product Owners and stakeholders on prioritisation and trade-off decisions.
• Experience ensuring services meet security, regulatory, and audit requirements through embedded controls.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills across engineering, risk, and business teams.