Cybersecurity Manager: Architecture & Engineering at Woolworths

Introduction

• At Woolies we are on a mission to maintain and develop a high-performing cybersecurity function in support of a complex business undergoing digital transformation. We are looking for a senior leader in the cybersecurity team to take responsibility for cybersecurity architecture and engineering across Woolworths South Africa. This role leads a small technical team that designs, maintains and enhances the security technology stack with a zero-trust philosophy, supporting the key principles of ‘security by design and default’, and leverages modern technology and AI capabilities. This function enables security and technology teams through both change and operations. This is a highly technical role that reports to the CISO and requires demonstrable experience in security design, engineering and threat modelling.

Job description
PEOPLE

• Enhancing cyber intellectual capital: Leadership and management of the cybersecurity architecture and engineering team covering talent development and performance management.
• Building culture and teaming: Management of internal partnerships for execution, including context setting, skills transfer, and up-skilling.
• Management of key external security partner and service relationships.

PROCESS - ARCHITECTURE

• Maintain the cybersecurity architecture covering the current and future technology landscape. Identify solutions to enhance our architecture (e.g. improve visibility, reduce noise, automate or consolidate).
• Contribute to Business Case formulation with the relevant security input – advisory, standards and security patterns.
• Support proactive threat modelling with other cyber and technology stakeholders.
• Own cybersecurity Enterprise Architecture (EA) principles and drive adoption through EA and across the business.
• Make security architectural information easily accessible and self-service to support scale, speed and security by design.
• Proactively identify security design gaps in existing and proposed architectures and provide required changes or enhancements. Document these as relevant for re-use.
• Remain aware of global security industry trends and translate these into meaningful contributions to the cybersecurity strategy, principles and ways of working.

PROCESS – SECURITY ENGINEERING

• Take responsibility for the cybersecurity technology landscape across Woolworths.
• Lead a small team of engineers to improve cyber technology in support of the SOC and Business Enablement capabilities with a focus on continual identification of threats and validation of controls, and in support of key principles such as visibility, coverage and quality.
• Enhance technology solutions to automate and streamline operations.
• Take responsibility for the infrastructure of identified cybersecurity tools – maintain, enhance, secure and upgrade where relevant.
• Work with the SOC to configure (including coding and scripting) SOC tools and alerts.

PROCESS - BOTH

• Contribute to the ongoing maintenance and enhancement of Cyber and Information Security Policies, Standards, Procedures and Guidelines.
• Manage forecasts and budgets.

CUSTOMER

• Understand Cyber, IT and Business strategies and contribute to the creation and delivery of the annual cybersecurity roadmap and execution with a specific focus on security architecture and engineering disciplines.
• Plan and prioritize projects and workload to deliver to the roadmap.
• Provide updates, context and feedback to relevant stakeholders.

Minimum requirements

• 12 years relevant experience in the cyber and information security discipline.
• 5 years experience in security engineering.
• 2 years experience in security architecture.
• 2 years experience in people leadership.
• 4-year IT qualification.
• Demonstrable experience in leading a specialised cybersecurity team within a large environment.
• Experience with security operations tools, frameworks, practices, and processes.
• Industry certifications (e.g. Palo, Google, AWS, Qualys).
• Resiliency, determination, and pragmatism.
• May be required to assist outside of working hours.

 ADDITIONAL CRITERIA

• Experience in programming and scripting is highly advantageous.
• Experience in building and maturing SOC capabilities is advantageous.
• Experience in cloud security architecture and technologies.
• Experience with automation and ML/AI capabilities.
• Practical experience with adversarial frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK.