Head of Adversarial Engineering

If you’re looking for a career that will help you stand out, join HSBC, and fulfil your potential - whether you want a career that could take you to the top, or an exciting new direction, we offer opportunities, support and rewards that will take you further.

We’re one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world, with a network that covers more than 50 countries and territories. We aim to be where the growth is, enabling businesses to thrive and economies to prosper, and, ultimately, helping people fulfil their hopes and realise their ambitions.

We are seeking a Head of Adversarial Engineering

Lead the adversarial engineering team and remain hands-on in building and running the platforms, infrastructure and automation that enables safe, repeatable and auditable offensive-security testing, developing and operating cutting-edge adversary simulation capability aligned to the evolving threat landscape. The role sits between Red Team delivery and security research, translating operational needs and research into scalable, reusable engineering capability.

In this fantastic role, oversee delivery of AI/agentic adversarial tooling projects end-to-end setting direction, governance and evaluation standards while remaining hands-on in designing, building and operating AI-enabled automation and test harnesses that improve operator effectiveness without compromising safety, auditability or rules of engagement.

As an HSBC employee in the UK, you’ll have access to tailored professional development opportunities and a competitive pay and benefits package. This includes private healthcare for all UK-based employees, enhanced maternity and adoption pay and support when you return to work, and a contributory pension scheme with a generous employer contribution.

In this role, you will:

• Set technical direction and standards for adversarial engineering (security, reliability, repeatability, logging, access control and operational safety/OPSEC). 

• Set direction for AI/agentic engineering across the toolset (approved use-cases, guardrails, prompt/model versioning, evaluation harnesses and regression testing) and lead hands-on delivery to ensure AI capabilities are safe, reliable and auditable. 

• Lead by example through hands-on engineering: design, build, code review, troubleshooting and technical decision-making. 

• Own team ways of working (backlog, prioritisation, quality gates, documentation standards) and reduce single-person dependency. 

To be successful in this role you should have the following skills:

• Strong experience in red teaming, adversary simulation, penetration testing or offensive-security engineering. 

• Strong software engineering experience across multiple languages (e.g., Python plus one or more of C/C++/C#/Go/Java) 

• Proven experience building/operating offensive-security infrastructure in AWS, Azure and/or other cloud providers. 

• Strong Infrastructure-as-Code and automation skills (Terraform and Ansible). 

• Solid Linux administration and secure cloud-hosted infrastructure experience. 

• Understanding of C2 infrastructure, redirectors, logging, OPSEC and safe operational constraints. 

• Experience building and operating AI-enabled tooling/agents with strong safety controls. 

• Experience implementing identity, authentication, access control, hardening, firewalling and audit logging for sensitive platforms. 

• Ability to support live assessments under time pressure with clear, calm communication. 

• Experience coaching/mentoring engineers and improving team delivery practices. 

• Relevant certifications (OSCP, SANS, or equivalent experience). 

Being open to different points of view is important for our business and the communities we serve. At HSBC, we’re dedicated to creating diverse and inclusive workplaces - no matter their gender, ethnicity, disability, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic background or age. We are committed to removing barriers and ensuring careers at HSBC are inclusive and accessible for everyone to be at their best. We take pride in being a Disability Confident Leader and will offer an interview to people with disabilities, long term conditions or neurodivergent candidates who meet the minimum criteria for the role. 

If you have a need that requires accommodations or changes during the recruitment process, please get in touch with our Recruitment Helpdesk via hsbc.recruitment@hsbc.com.