The Role
Global Risk & Security (GR&S) enables Vanguard's business strategy by protecting our clients, colleagues, assets, and information while fostering a strong risk culture across the organisation. Our teams combine deep expertise, enterprise-wide insight, and trusted advice to help business leaders make informed, risk-based decisions.
Within GR&S, the Enterprise Security & Fraud function is responsible for protecting Vanguard's people, property, data, and client assets globally. As the threat landscape continues to evolve, we are investing in advanced capabilities to defend against emerging AI-enabled and autonomous threats.
We are seeking an experienced AI Threat & Defence Analyst to establish and lead a new capability focused on defending Vanguard against adversarial AI, autonomous attack techniques, and next-generation cyber threats. This is a rare opportunity to shape strategy, build a specialist team, and influence how AI security is embedded across the organisation.
In this role you will
Establish and lead a strategic AI Security and Adversarial Threat Defence programme, defining its vision, operating model, governance framework, and technical roadmap
Build, mentor, and develop a team of security specialists spanning threat research, reverse engineering, AI security, and detection engineering
Design, test, and evaluate preventative, detective, and compensating controls against AI-enabled and autonomous attack techniques, validating effectiveness through realistic adversary simulation
Develop and operate deception technologies, including honeypots, canary assets, and decoy environments designed to disrupt, misdirect, and detect sophisticated threat actors
Create and maintain dedicated research and testing environments to simulate adversarial AI scenarios and continuously assess defensive effectiveness
Conduct malware analysis, reverse engineering, and forensic investigations to identify attacker capability, intent, behaviour patterns, and indicators of compromise
Develop AI-enabled analysis and intelligence workflows to improve efficiency across threat intelligence, threat hunting, incident response, and security operations
Translate threat intelligence into automated detection, response, and containment capabilities to identify and disrupt attacks at scale
Assess emerging AI-related threats and model likely attack paths to inform security investment and defensive priorities
Lead complex incident investigations involving AI-enabled threats, including forensic analysis, root cause identification, and executive reporting
Partner with AI/ML engineering, cloud security, identity and access management, enterprise architecture, and technology teams to embed security controls into AI solutions from design through deployment
Define programme KPIs and maturity measures, reporting progress and risk exposure to senior leadership, governance forums, and risk committees
Ensure alignment with recognised frameworks and standards including NIST AI RMF, MITRE ATT&CK, MITRE ATLAS, OWASP LLM Top 10, ISO 27001, the EU AI Act, and evolving UK regulatory requirements
What it takes
Significant experience within Cyber Security, Threat Intelligence, Incident Response, Red Teaming, Adversary Emulation, or Offensive Security
Experience building or leading specialist security capabilities, programmes, or teams
Strong technical expertise in malware analysis and reverse engineering across Windows platforms, including x86/x64, .NET, and scripting frameworks
Hands-on experience conducting cyber investigations, digital forensics, and incident response activities
Strong Python development and security automation skills
Understanding of large language models (LLMs), autonomous agents, AI security risks, and adversarial attack techniques
Experience designing and implementing security monitoring, detection engineering, or deception capabilities
Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, including presenting to senior executives and…