Head of Security

Posted 4 days 15 hours ago by Reach

Permanent
Full Time
Other
Not Specified, United Kingdom
Job Description
About Reach

At Reach, we believe that the global ecommerce space is ripe for disruption. Our strategic partnerships with currency exchange providers allow us to offer direct and guaranteed, real time currency exchange rates. We help retailers grow by understanding global consumers and how changes in their shopping experience affect their business.

Role Overview

We're looking for a Head of Security to own and lead information security at Reach. This is a hands on leadership role: you will set the strategy, own the program end to end, and stay actively in the work alongside your team. In a given week you might be writing a policy, triaging a pen test finding, running a phishing campaign, responding to a customer security questionnaire, and presenting the quarterly security update to leadership.

The right person is energized by owning an entire domain end to end, is comfortable moving between strategy and execution, and is equally credible with a senior engineer and a SOC 2 auditor. You believe security is most effective when it is practical, measurable, and built into how the business operates.

Key Responsibilities
  • Vulnerability management and offensive testing: Own the vulnerability lifecycle end to end - intake, triage, prioritization, risk acceptance, ticketing to dev teams, and remediation within SLA - and manage external pen tests and targeted assessments. Report regularly on status, SLA performance, and trends.
  • Security operations and incident response: Manage our MSSP partner for 24/7 SIEM and SOC monitoring; ensure telemetry, detections, and playbooks match our threat model. Serve as incident commander for real events, and run regular tabletops and post incident reviews.
  • Policy, controls, and risk: Define and maintain Reach's security policies and control framework. Design, implement, and measure the effectiveness of controls; maintain a risk register; and surface material risk decisions to leadership.
  • Compliance and audits: Own SOC 2 Type II and PCI DSS end to end with continuous control monitoring and evidence collection between audits. Serve as the primary contact for external auditors.
  • Application and cloud security: Partner with engineering on secure SDLC, threat modeling for new products and features, SAST/DAST/SCA coverage, and cloud security posture (IAM, configuration, workload protection).
  • Identity and access management: Own IAM policy, periodic access reviews, privileged access, and joiner/mover/leaver processes, in partnership with IT and People.
  • Third party and customer security: Run Reach's vendor risk program (due diligence, questionnaires, DPAs, ongoing monitoring) and own responses to customer and prospect security reviews.
  • Security awareness and training: Run phishing simulations, ongoing and role targeted training, and regular company wide sessions on new threats and best practices.
  • Executive reporting: Provide regular security posture updates with meaningful metrics (MTTD/MTTR, patch latency, control coverage, phishing outcomes, audit readiness).
  • People, budget, and tooling: Act as a mentor for your report; own the security budget and tool stack - evaluating, procuring, rationalizing, and retiring tools as the program matures.
Qualifications
  • 8+ years in information security, with 3+ years leading a security program or a major security function.
  • Direct experience owning SOC 2 Type II audits end to end; PCI DSS experience strongly preferred.
  • Proven, hands on ownership of vulnerability management programs at scale.
  • Experience managing an MSSP/MDR relationship for SIEM and 24/7 SOC.
  • Strong application and cloud security fundamentals, with hands on experience in AWS, GCP, or Azure, and the ability to partner credibly with engineering.
  • Experience leading incident response end to end, including cross functional coordination and working with external parties.
  • Experience writing and operationalizing security policies against recognized frameworks (NIST CSF, ISO 27001, CIS Controls).
  • Excellent written and verbal communication - credible with engineers, executives, auditors, and customers.
  • Comfortable as a player coach in a lean environment, with a strong sense of ownership and bias for action.
Additional Assets
  • Experience in fintech, payments, or ecommerce - ideally cross border or merchant of record.
  • Prior experience standing up or scaling a security program at a growth stage company.
  • Familiarity with GRC/continuous compliance platforms (e.g., Vanta, Drata, Secureframe).
  • AWS experience (our primary cloud) and Atlassian suite (Jira, Confluence) for workflow and documentation.
  • Formal people management experience.
  • Relevant certifications (e.g., CISSP, CISM, CCSP).
Why Join Reach
  • Competitive compensation
  • Flexible remote work
  • Comprehensive benefits
  • Opportunity to build and own a security function
  • Direct impact on a global commerce platform