Pentesting Operations Lead

About the Position

Atos is seeking a Pentesting Operations Lead to oversee and improve our penetration testing services across the United Kingdom and Ireland. This role is ideal for an experienced professional looking to take on a broader operational leadership position within a penetration testing or offensive security organization.

Responsibilities

• Lead the UK&I penetration testing service

  • Own the operational delivery framework for penetration testing services across the UK & Ireland.
  • Re-engineer and simplify operational processes to improve consistency, efficiency, and scalability.
  • Establish and maintain service governance, operating procedures, controls, metrics, and reporting.
  • Manage service demand, delivery pipelines, capacity constraints, and operational priorities.
  • Promote high standards of delivery quality, client experience, and continuous improvement.

• Coordinate and orchestrate testing engagements

  • Act as the central coordination point for penetration testing engagements.
  • Schedule testing activities across internal teams and multiple third-party providers.
  • Coordinate clients, account teams, delivery stakeholders, and testing partners throughout the engagement lifecycle.
  • Track dependencies, risks, actions, and delivery milestones from initiation through to closure.
  • Resolve scheduling conflicts, operational issues, and delivery challenges, escalating where appropriate.

• Support engagement scoping

  • Support clients and account teams in clarifying testing requirements and desired outcomes.
  • Work with specialist providers to define suitable scopes, assumptions, testing methods, and rules of engagement.
  • Help ensure engagements are appropriately sized, planned, scheduled, and commercially viable.
  • Maintain consistent scoping templates and acceptance criteria across different categories of testing.
  • Help stakeholders understand the most suitable testing approach for their systems, risks, and assurance needs.

• Manage external testing partners

  • Manage day-to-day operational relationships with third-party penetration testing providers.
  • Coordinate the allocation of work across approved suppliers according to capability, availability, and commercial requirements.
  • Monitor delivery performance, quality, responsiveness, and adherence to agreed service expectations.
  • Support supplier onboarding, due diligence, and periodic service reviews.
  • Act as the operational escalation point and drive constructive improvement across the partner ecosystem.

• Assure quality and client outcomes

  • Oversee the quality and completeness of engagement outputs before they are issued to clients.
  • Confirm that reports are clear, consistent, and aligned with the agreed scope and expected professional standards.
  • Coordinate the clarification of findings between clients and testing providers.
  • Capture lessons learned and convert them into improvements to processes, templates, and supplier performance.
  • Support effective communication of technical findings and associated business risk.

• Maintain commercial and financial control

  • Track engagements from initial request through delivery, acceptance, and commercial closure.
  • Maintain visibility of pipeline, revenue, costs, margins, and delivery forecasts.
  • Coordinate purchase orders, supplier invoices, client billing, and internal approvals.
  • Work with finance, account, and delivery teams to support timely and accurate commercial administration.
  • Identify operational or commercial leakage and implement proportionate corrective action.

• Develop the capability

  • Create standardized methods, templates, governance artefacts, and delivery playbooks.
  • Support bids, proposals, client workshops, statements of work, and service presentations.
  • Identify opportunities to improve efficiency through workflow automation and appropriate tooling.
  • Use service data and stakeholder feedback to prioritize improvement initiatives.
  • Help shape new offensive security propositions and routes to market.

• AI and emerging offensive security services

  • As the service matures, help shape future capabilities, including AI-assisted penetration testing, security testing of AI-enabled applications, AI red teaming, and emerging offensive security methods.

Requirements

• Experience working within penetration testing, offensive security, security assurance, cyber consulting, or a closely related professional-services environment.
• A sound understanding of the end-to-end penetration testing delivery lifecycle.
• Experience coordinating complex activities across clients, delivery teams, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
• Experience managing external suppliers, partners, or outsourced services.
• Strong operational planning, organization, and prioritization skills.
• Experience improving processes, governance, or service-delivery practices.
• Strong stakeholder-management skills and the confidence to manage competing priorities.
• The ability to balance client outcomes, delivery quality, operational constraints, and commercial objectives.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain technical issues to non-technical stakeholders.
• A collaborative, accountable, and improvement-focused approach.

Technical Understanding

• Sufficient technical understanding to support scoping, challenge delivery assumptions, and oversee the quality of testing engagements. Relevant areas include:
  • Infrastructure penetration testing.
  • Web application and API security testing.
  • Cloud security testing.
  • Internal and external security assessments.
  • Vulnerability assessment and validation.
  • Red teaming and adversary simulation concepts.
  • Reporting, risk communication, and remediation validation.

Nice to Have

• Experience leading penetration testing engagements, teams, or operational functions.
• Experience working within or alongside a CREST-accredited penetration testing provider.
• Familiarity with CREST, CHECK, and relevant NCSC assurance expectations.
• Experience managing a portfolio of work across several testing providers.
• Knowledge of demand management, resource forecasting, PMO, or service-management practices.
• Familiarity with ITIL principles and operational service transition.
• Experience supporting bids, proposals, pre-sales discovery, or client workshops.
• Relevant cybersecurity, project, service-management, or operational-delivery certifications.

We Offer

• A visible role with the opportunity to re-engineer and shape a strategically important UK&I cybersecurity service.
• Varied work across service operations, stakeholder engagement, supplier leadership, commercial governance, and innovation.
• Opportunities for professional development, continuous learning, and career progression.
• Remote and hybrid working possibilities, subject to business and client requirements.
• The opportunity to participate in volunteering, charity, inclusion, and sustainability initiatives.

Benefits:

• Pension Scheme - contributions matched up to 10%
• Private medical cover
• Income Protection
• Life Assurance
• 25 days paid leave + National Holidays
• Flex benefits program

About the Company

Atos is the Atos Group brand dedicated to AI-powered, secure, end-to-end digital services. Atos designs, develops, and operates critical digital environments that drive performance, resilience, and sovereignty, helping public and private organizations worldwide retain control over their data and infrastructures, while meeting regulatory requirements.

With more than 52,000 employees serving over 4,500 clients across 54 countries, Atos helps modernize core IT systems, accelerate cloud and data transformation, strengthen cybersecurity, and deliver secure digital workplace environments to support its clients, its employees, and society. Atos also provides consulting and advisory services through its Atos Amplify brand.

Atos is a recognized leader in its industry across Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria. Find out more on our CSR commitment.

Choose your future. Choose Atos.