Security Engineer

Establishing a modern, enterprise-grade security function for one of the UK’s fastest-growing Managing General Agents and brokerage groups. The end-client operates across three continents with entities spanning the UK, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, expanding dynamically through M&A operations.

The scope focuses on hardening a complex hybrid Microsoft environment, unifying fragmented security tooling across a multi-entity ecosystem, and driving a consistent, governed, and resilient security baseline across the entire Group.

Legacy, reactive security practices are being replaced with a Zero Trust architecture – deploying Microsoft’s full security stack across identity, endpoints, cloud apps, data, and network. The project aims at strengthening detection and response capabilities to protect a high-growth insurance business operating under Lloyd’s, UK GDPR, and MAS regulatory frameworks.

Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Identity, Defender for Cloud Apps, Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Purview, Intune, Conditional Access, Azure, Microsoft Zero Trust framework, Terraform.

The primary objective is hardening the Group’s security posture across a multi-entity structure and building operational capabilities to detect, respond to, and recover from security events. Main areas of engagement:

• Deploying and Optimizing Microsoft Defender XDR: Onboarding entities to Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Identity, and Defender for Cloud Apps, alongside integrating operational signals into Microsoft Sentinel as the central SIEM/SOAR platform.

• Identity and Access Hardening: Implementing Zero Trust identity controls including phishing-resistant MFA, Privileged Identity Management (PIM), Conditional Access policies, and Active Directory security hardening across hybrid on-premises and Entra ID environments.

• Security Operations & Incident Response: Co-operating with external MDR providers to optimize operational response workflows.

• Security Policy Standardization: Developing, documenting, and monitoring compliance with security baselines, configuration standards, and control frameworks across all Group entities worldwide.

• Cloud and SaaS Security Governance: Securing M365, Azure, and the broader SaaS ecosystem through Purview data classification, DLP policies, MDCA session controls, and continuous posture management.

• M&A Security Integration: Execution of a repeatable security onboarding framework for newly acquired entities during continuous business expansion.

The engagement takes place within a lean, agile project environment delivering complete security stack coverage across DevOps, Infrastructure Engineering, Security Engineering, and Business Analysis domains, requiring close cross-functional alignment with business stakeholders to facilitate effective knowledge transfer and strict integration with strategic goals.