Deep, production-tested experience securing AWS environments at scale. AWS experience is a firm requirement for this role; you have strong, evidence-based opinions about cloud security architecture because you have encountered the failure modes, not just read about them
Direct experience owning cloud infrastructure at the organisation level. You have defined account structures, designed organisation-wide policy enforcement, and governed access across a multi-account AWS environment in a context where getting it wrong had real consequences
The ability to design and implement access control systems that work at company scale - you understand the failure modes of permission models that grow without governance, and you know how to build the systems that prevent them
The ability to write defensive, high-quality code - you are not a policy engineer who delegates implementation; you build the infrastructure and tooling yourself, and you build it well
A strong mental model of how the web works end to end, including the security controls and failure modes from client to server and the ability to reason about where those failure modes intersect with cloud infrastructure
A genuine instinct for finding flaws in systems - you spot what others miss, communicate it clearly, and drive resolution rather than generating reports
The ability to reduce risk in inherently insecure efforts without defaulting to industry norms. You know when the standard approach is the right one and when it is simply the familiar one, and you are willing to argue the difference
A track record of inheriting complex, live systems and improving them without breaking what works. You know when to rewrite and when to refine, and you can defend either position
The ability to operate across the breadth of Platform Security - identity and access management, secrets management, infrastructure security, network controls, container security, and supply chain security at the infrastructure layer - with enough depth to make good decisions in each area and enough range to see how they connect
Experience working in regulated environments where multiple compliance frameworks are simultaneously active and where audit evidence needs to be generated programmatically, not assembled by hand
The credibility to be the go-to security contact for an engineering organisation. You engage technically with senior engineers, translate security requirements into decisions they can act on, and push back effectively without creating friction
A natural inclination to collaborate: you work with engineering teams, not around them, and you understand that a control nobody adopts is not a control
Beneficial
Experience building or shaping a security sub-function - defining its scope, establishing its operating model, and creating the conditions for others to join and contribute effectively
Familiarity with the regulatory and data protection landscape across Paystack's markets. The frameworks are not identical and understanding how they interact at the level of technical controls is a genuine differentiator
Experience working closely with a parent company's security programme while maintaining independent ownership of a subsidiary or regional environment
Exposure to security incident response at the infrastructure level - not as a SecOps function, but as the person who owns the underlying platform when something goes wrong and needs to understand it deeply and quickly
Experience establishing security standards and reference architectures that engineering teams adopt because they are genuinely useful - patterns that get used, not mandates that get worked around
Soft Skills
High agency: you identify problems before they are raised, take ownership without being asked, and drive clarity in ambiguous situations rather than waiting for it
A knack for clear, precise communication: you can explain a control decision to a senior engineer, a gap to an auditor, and a strategic priority to leadership, and each version lands correctly for its audience; you are also comfortable pushing back when warranted
Calm and methodical under pressure: when something breaks at the infrastructure level, you are the person others orientate around
Collaborative by instinct: you build trust with engineering through quality and reliability, not through authority, and you understand that the Security team's credibility is shaped significantly by how Platform Security is perceived by the people it works alongside every day
A systems thinker who builds for scale: you are not optimising for your own output; you are building something that will outlast your direct involvement in it, and that shapes every decision you make
GK
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