About Us
Operating from Abu Dhabi since 1985, our client provides personal and business banking services across retail banking, wealth management, commercial banking, corporate finance, investment banking, and cash management. The breadth of these financial services creates a complex technology landscape where secure customer access, resilient operations, and disciplined cyber controls are essential. This organisation continues to protect highly regulated banking activities while responding to increasingly sophisticated threats across infrastructure, cloud services, applications, and emerging artificial-intelligence capabilities.
Job Description
The Cyber Security Engineer will strengthen the blue-team capability by turning security requirements and threat intelligence into repeatable, measurable control validation. You will assess significant changes and deployments across cloud, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and model supply-chain environments, confirming that agreed safeguards perform effectively before services move into operation.
Success in this role means that material attack techniques are translated into relevant tests quickly, findings are accurately consolidated and prioritised, and remediation is tracked through to evidence-based closure. Working within the established lines-of-defence model, you will provide rigorous first-line validation against approved scenarios while preserving the independence of second-line red teaming and assurance.
Key Responsibilities
- Plan and execute continuous blue-team validation for significant technology deployments across cloud, infrastructure, artificial-intelligence, and model supply-chain environments.
- Translate the approved threat coverage matrix into practical validation scenarios, test cases, and release-readiness evidence.
- Monitor MITRE ATLAS, OWASP Large Language Model, and related intelligence sources for techniques relevant to banking environments.
- Convert newly identified attack methods into repeatable automated or semi-automated tests within the agreed seven-day service-level target.
- Use autonomous penetration-testing and adversarial validation capabilities to assess control effectiveness without disrupting critical services.
- Coordinate with security, engineering, risk, and technology stakeholders to schedule testing around significant deployments and material changes.
- Consolidate, deduplicate, classify, and maintain findings through platforms such as DefectDojo and Attestation.
- Track remediation against severity-based service-level agreements and verify corrective evidence before recommending closure.
- Apply mean-time-to-remediation gates and confirm that unresolved material issues are addressed before redeployment approval.
- Produce reliable management information covering open findings, remediation performance, pipeline gate outcomes, control coverage, and prompt-injection blocking rates.
- Maintain clear records distinguishing first-line control validation from independent unknown-scenario red teaming conducted by the second line of defence.
- Contribute to the continuous improvement of testing methods, automation, reporting, and threat-informed assurance across the security lifecycle.
Requirements
- Several years of practical experience in cyber security engineering, blue-team operations, offensive security, security validation, or a closely related discipline.
- Demonstrable experience replacing periodic manual penetration testing with continuous or automated control validation.
- Strong knowledge of cloud security, infrastructure security, vulnerability management, and deployment or pipeline assurance.
- Hands-on familiarity with autonomous penetration-testing platforms, including AWS Security Agent, Horizon3, or comparable tools.
- Practical experience assessing artificial-intelligence systems with tools such as Garak, PyRIT, Claude Security, Opus 4.x, Codex, or equivalent solutions.
- Ability to design and maintain tests aligned to the OWASP Large Language Model Top 10, MITRE ATLAS, and relevant adversarial security frameworks.
- Experience converting threat intelligence into actionable test scenarios, automation workflows, and measurable control outcomes.
- Comfort working with defect-management, evidence-management, dashboarding, and workflow-automation platforms.
- Understanding of financial-services security, regulatory expectations, risk-based prioritisation, and the need to protect availability and customer data.
- Clear understanding of first-line and second-line responsibilities, including the distinction between approved control validation and independent assurance.
- Strong analytical and investigative skills, with the ability to interpret technical findings and communicate business impact to varied stakeholders.
- Excellent written and verbal English, with the discipline to maintain precise documentation, remediation records, and executive-ready reporting.
Benefits
- Direct responsibility for improving cyber resilience across a diversified banking environment serving personal, commercial, corporate, and investment customers.
- Exposure to advanced security validation spanning cloud infrastructure, autonomous testing, artificial intelligence, large-language-model risks, and model supply chains.
- Opportunity to influence how threat intelligence, automated testing, remediation governance, and deployment gates operate at scale.
- Work with established security platforms, workflow automation, vulnerability evidence, and performance dashboards that support measurable outcomes.
- Professional growth through involvement in emerging AI-security practices and threat-informed control assurance.
- A role with meaningful visibility across technology, security, risk, and operational stakeholders.
- A competitive package aligned with the scope, technical demands, and strategic importance of the position.
- Abu Dhabi-based employment within a long-established financial institution and a highly regulated industry.
Other
Based in Abu Dhabi, this position is suited to a security engineer who combines hands-on testing capability with strong operational discipline. You will need to challenge controls constructively, document evidence precisely, and maintain momentum from intelligence intake through validation, remediation, and redeployment approval.
Experience across cloud security, adversarial testing, AI red teaming, vulnerability governance, or continuous assurance will be valuable. Candidates should be comfortable operating in a structured banking environment where testing quality, separation of duties, auditability, and timely risk reduction are equally important.
Charlie Day
Recruitment Consultant
ETail Specialist
- charlie.day@forsythbarnes.com
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Dubai, United Arab Emirates