Head of Security

Company Overview

Aptitude Software builds finance and accounting software for large, regulated organisations: banks, insurers, telecoms operators and other enterprises that run their financial record-keeping on our platforms. Our flagship product, Fynapse, is a cloud-native accounting platform running on Kubernetes across AWS and Azure. Alongside it we run an established portfolio of accounting, revenue recognition, lease accounting and insurance calculation products, deployed both as SaaS and on-premise at customer sites, and a subscription billing and payments business that handles payment card data.

The Role

You will own security at Aptitude Software: product and cloud security, internal and corporate security, governance, risk and compliance, third-party and vendor security, business continuity and disaster recovery, and the security tooling estate. You will build these into one function with one owner, one set of priorities and one source of truth, and you will be the person our customers, auditors, executive team and board look to for a straight answer on where we stand.

Responsibilities

• Security leadership and strategy: Define and own the security strategy and roadmap, establish security metrics, own the information security risk register, security policy, and budget.
• Product and cloud security: Own security across the product estate (Fynapse, established accounting products, and payments platform). Set standards for secure design and build, and run vulnerability management as a single process.
• Governance, risk and compliance and vendor management: Own ISO 27001, SOC 1, SOC 2 and PCI DSS compliance, audit calendars, and work with legal/DPO on data protection and contractual security commitments.
• Business continuity and disaster recovery: Own the programme, including annual test schedules and tabletop exercises.
• Team leadership: Lead, develop and retain a team of four security professionals.
• Technology leadership: Act as a sparring partner to the CPTO and engineering leadership, contributing to technology strategy and ensuring security is designed into product roadmaps.

The role offers the opportunity to lead the security function for a company serving highly security-conscious enterprise customers. You will sit within the technology leadership team, reporting directly to the Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO), with the scope to grow the security team incrementally through 2027.

Essential

• A career in security with hands-on technical experience (threat modelling, vulnerability management, cloud security architecture, identity and access, secure software development, detection and response).
• Experience leading a security team, including line management, development and retention of specialists.
• Experience running security in a software or SaaS company serving regulated enterprise customers, and of facing those customers on security matters.
• Working knowledge of ISO 27001 and SOC 2, and experience of being accountable for audits and certifications. PCI DSS experience is an advantage.
• Practical understanding of cloud security on AWS and Azure, Kubernetes-based platforms, infrastructure as code and modern CI/CD.
• Experience owning or running third-party and vendor risk management.
• The judgement to distinguish theoretical from practical risk and to prioritise accordingly.
• Clear, direct communication in writing and in person.