Head of Cybersecurity

Xebia is a global technology consulting company helping organizations transform through technology, data, cloud, AI and software engineering.

Experience & credibility:

• Senior cybersecurity leader with deep operational security, cloud, identity and incident response experience; typically 12+ years in security with 5+ years in a leadership role.
• Track record of running or transforming a SOC/detection function and leading enterprise-scale incident response and crisis management.
• Practical experience securing multi-cloud and modern application environments, plus AI models and agentic AI systems.
• Experience owning business continuity/disaster recovery planning and data loss prevention or IP protection programmes in technology or professional services settings.
• Ability to balance pragmatic delivery with risk reduction and customer assurance.
• Credible with executives, auditors, customers and technical teams; comfortable presenting cyber risk in business terms to the Board.
• Experience leading distributed, multicultural teams across regions.

Certifications & knowledge:

• Indicative certifications: CISSP, CISM, GCIH, GCFA, CCSP, OSCP.
• Working familiarity with NIST CSF 2.0, ISO 27001, MITRE ATT&CK, GDPR, NIS2, DORA, OWASP LLM Top 10, OWASP Agentic AI threats, MITRE ATLAS or equivalent hands-on exposure securing AI models and autonomous agents.

What will make you successful:

• Strong hands-on technical depth.
• Cybersecurity programme and transformation leadership.
• Modern cloud and identity security expertise.
• Practical AI/LLM and agentic AI security experience.
• Strong customer orientation.
• Excellent communication and leadership presence.
• Ability to operate effectively in a global, distributed environment.

Cybersecurity Operations & Incident Response:

• Define and operate cybersecurity capability across prevention, detection, response and recovery.
• Own global incident response, cyber crisis coordination, tabletop exercises, post-incident reviews and remediation tracking.
• Own security tooling strategy across SIEM, XDR, EDR, SOAR and threat intelligence.
• Drive detection engineering, alert quality, automation and security dashboards.
• Lead vulnerability and continuous exposure management across infrastructure, cloud, endpoints, applications and external-facing assets.
• Drive continuous improvement of overall security posture.

Identity, Cloud & Modern Architecture:

• Own identity security and drive Zero Trust adoption, including PAM, conditional access and governance of service accounts and machine identities.
• Own cloud security posture and workload protection across multi-cloud environments, including containers, Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code.
• Partner with Infrastructure, Applications and AI/Data teams to embed secure-by-design patterns and DevSecOps practices.
• Define and continuously improve minimum security baselines for endpoints, identities, cloud, SaaS, networks, code repositories and AI platforms.
• Evaluate and implement security technologies and controls that address identified risks.

AI, LLM & Agentic AI Security:

• Own security risk oversight for AI and LLM-based systems including model and data security, training/fine-tuning data integrity, adversarial robustness, model theft/extraction, prompt injection and misuse.
• Define and enforce security guardrails for agentic AI including least-privilege access, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, action logging, audit trails and containment controls.
• Assess risks related to third-party foundation models, plugins, MCP servers and agent frameworks.
• Maintain inventory of AI models and agents in use and assess their security exposure.
• Partner with AI/ML Engineering and platform teams to enable secure adoption of AI-assisted and agentic coding, delivery and client-facing tools.
• Help continuously adapt security approach to evolving AI threat landscape.

Cyber Resilience, Business Continuity & Data Protection:

• Own cybersecurity contribution to business continuity planning and disaster recovery.
• Ensure restoration of critical systems and services within agreed RTO/RPO objectives.
• Drive ransomware resilience through immutable and segmented backups, isolated recovery environments and tested recovery playbooks.
• Lead regular cyber crisis, business continuity and recovery exercises.
• Own protection of intellectual property, source code, proprietary methodologies, AI models, training data and confidential client deliverables.
• Drive DLP, access controls, code repository security and exfiltration monitoring.
• Partner with HR and Legal to manage insider risk throughout employee and contractor lifecycle.

Security Programme & Transformation Leadership:

• Own and evolve global cybersecurity transformation roadmap.
• Translate identified risks into technology, process and programme initiatives.
• Lead cybersecurity programmes ensuring clear milestones, ownership and measurable outcomes.
• Build business cases and contribute to investment decisions around cybersecurity tooling, capabilities and team growth.
• Establish practical, measurable and enforceable security controls across organisation.
• Build and develop global cybersecurity team.
• Work effectively with distributed teams and external security partners.

Customer & Business Orientation:

• Support customer security questionnaires, audits and assurance activities.
• Anticipate customer security expectations and translate into practical security capabilities.
• Contribute to strategic sales opportunities and client engagements.
• Help position Xebia as a trusted technology and security partner.
• Balance security requirements with business and customer needs, finding pragmatic solutions.

Executive Leadership & Assurance:

• Provide executive and Board-level reporting on cybersecurity posture, threat trends, incidents, remediation status and maturity.
• Communicate complex cybersecurity risks in clear business terms.
• Maintain risk-based cybersecurity transformation roadmap with quarterly milestones.
• Manage third-party, vendor and software/AI supply chain cyber risk.
• Own execution of security awareness programme, including phishing simulations, role-based training and insider risk culture.
• Support customer security assurance activities, audits, certifications and M&A cyber due diligence.
• Work with IT GRC & Assurance and Legal to ensure operational controls meet regulatory obligations including GDPR, NIS2, DORA and client contractual requirements.