Head of Reliability, Trust & Security

About the Role
Trust, reliability, and security start with you. In this role, you will build an organization where security, reliability, and compliance are the default path. You will own the environment and the standards that everyone building in it works to, while developing the function around you as the company grows, affecting both internal operations and customer engagements.

What You Will Own

• Environment ownership: Oversee the company’s cloud accounts, identity, keys, and source code. Ensure that everyone who builds in the environment operates under the company’s access controls with a clean separation path for any partner.
• Security: Manage security engineering, application and cloud security, identity and access, detection and response, and vulnerability management.
• Resilience & reliability: Define incident management, disaster recovery, and business continuity standards. Verify compliance with availability, recovery, and observability standards for engineers and partners.
• Trust & compliance: Ensure governance, security, and privacy compliance primarily based in Saudi regulatory standards (PDPL, NCA ECC-2:2024, NDMO data residency regulations, and SDAIA guidelines) with GDPR as the global privacy baseline. Process includes audit readiness and customer trust assurance.
• Data & secure channels: Manage the classification, segregation, encryption, and retention of the company’s own and customer data. Ensure secure file exchange and communication channels for sensitive information.
• Regulator & customer liaison: Act as the named company contact for NCA and for SDAIA/NDMO, managing security questionnaires and contractual security clauses.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy & leadership: Define and own a multi-year strategy and roadmap for scale across infrastructure, security, resilience, and trust, aligned with business goals. Report risk posture and progress to the executive team and board. Build certifications and policies to establish the company as a highly reliable and trusted organization.
• Security: Lead a security program based on zero-trust principles covering cloud, application, identity, data, and endpoint security. Embed security into the software lifecycle and own threat detection, incident response, and vulnerability management.
• Resilience & reliability: Establish standards for availability, recovery and observability, managing disaster recovery and business continuity plans. Lead responses to major incidents and effectively communicate with customers and leadership.
• Trust & compliance: Maintain necessary certifications and regulatory compliance (e.g. NCA ECC-2:2024, PDPL, NDMO) and manage enterprise risk, including the risk framework and risk appetite.

Where We Align

• Security experience: 10+ years in security, especially in cloud and data security; proven experience taking a company through its first major audits.
• Cloud depth: Ability to read and verify cloud architecture and infrastructure as code.
• Programmes & audits: Proven track record of leading certification or regulatory audits with direct experience working with Saudi regulators.
• Incidents & continuity: Experience in major incident response and disaster recovery.
• Executive communication: Clear communicator with the ability to translate technical risk into business decisions.
• Influence without authority: Capability to lead and influence teams to adhere to security and data standards.
• Builder’s mindset: Preference for automation and enablement over gatekeeping.
• Language proficiency: Fluency in Arabic and English, especially in engaging with regulators and executives.

Strong Advantage

• Experience in regulated sectors such as fintech, healthtech, or government technology.
• Knowledge of international data protection rules, including GDPR.
• Experience with securing AI and machine-learning systems.
• Familiarity with multi-cloud or hybrid environments.
• Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, or cloud architect credentials.

Our Values

• Customer first: Focus on customer outcomes and prioritize accordingly.
• Ownership mentality: Own outcomes end-to-end and take responsibility for resolving issues.
• Clear communicator: Simplify complex systems for diverse audiences and highlight the value of your work.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: Make progress with partial information and enjoy solving undefined problems.
• Long-term builder: Invest in the long-term success of the organization and bring insights into strategy and operations.
• Builds others: Focus on developing people and building capabilities with customers.

The Seat

• Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Reports to: Managing Director
• Travel: Required travel to customer sites across the Kingdom.
• Package: Includes a base salary with housing, transport, and education allowances, medical cover, and equity through the employee equity program. Terms are shared at the offer stage.

How We Work

• Curiosity: Continuously learn how work happens and evolve as the environment changes.
• Speed: Move quickly from briefing to first working results without waiting for perfect conditions.
• Rigour: Test claims against data and ensure delivery aligns with expectations.
• Confidence & humility: Be open to challenges and evidence-based change.
• Autonomy: Make decisions with incomplete information and organize work independently.
• Resourcefulness: Navigate obstacles creatively with available resources.
• Situational leadership: Lead or follow as appropriate based on the context.
• A force multiplier: Develop playbooks, reviews, and coaching that enhance team efficiency.
• AI-native depth: Integrate AI tools into work processes and understand AI system vulnerabilities.