Penetration Testing Program Governance & Vendor Strategy Manager

This role, within the Penetration Testing team, will be responsible for vendor management for third-party penetration testing delivery while owning the delivery excellence agenda across the program—governance, performance, and quality assurance. The role is the primary coordination point between Penetration Testing and the wider strategic functions and governance forums, supporting program-level governance oversight and alignment to Penetration Testing strategy. This is not a hands-on penetration testing role; it is a service delivery, governance, and commercial role with a strong technical and strategy focus. Success in this role requires sufficient technical depth to help shape Pen Test delivery and QA strategy, challenge approaches, and improve consistency of outcomes across vendors and stakeholder groups.
An applicant from a security consulting firm or a financial services background will have a distinct advantage.
Job Responsibilities
The role’s responsibilities include
Own vendor management for penetration testing delivery, including performance management, issue resolution, and continuous improvement.
Establish and maintain program-wide delivery standards (e.g., testing approach expectations, reporting structure, evidence quality, reproducibility, and retest criteria) and ensure vendor adherence.
Run vendor governance cadences and maintain KPI-driven reporting, action tracking, and escalation management.
Own program management oversight of Penetration Testing strategy execution, including maintaining delivery roadmaps and plans (e.g., Gantt/roadmap views), tracking milestones and dependencies, and driving disciplined status reporting.
Serve as the primary link between Penetration Testing and wider strategic functions and governance forums to align priorities, reporting, and cross-team initiatives.
Coordinate with partner teams (e.g., product/engineering, procurement, finance) to support governance and program execution.
Lead a small team by setting direction, allocating work, removing blockers, and building team capability through ongoing coaching and feedback
Required qualifications, capabilities and skills
Required skills include:
Proven experience in vendor management and program oversight in a large, matrixed organization.
Demonstrable program management capability (roadmap planning, milestone tracking, dependency management, RAID-style risk/issue tracking) with the ability to produce crisp, executive-ready status reporting.
Strong understanding of penetration testing delivery models and the offensive security space (not hands-on execution, but able to challenge, translate, and steer), including the ability to identify gaps in methodology, inconsistent severity, and insufficient evidence/impact articulation.
Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to drive decisions and resolve conflicts across technical and non-technical audiences.
Experience running governance forums with clear KPI reporting and action follow-through.
Strong organizational skills with meticulous attention to detail and the ability to manage multiple priorities.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear executive-ready updates and present effectively to senior stakeholders.
Experience in people management, including leading and developing a small team.
Preferred qualifications
Preferred experience includes
Experience supporting vendor commercial governance (renewals, rate cards, invoicing) and/or sourcing activities (RFP support).
Experience coordinating third-party security testing in regulated environments.
Technical background in offensive security, with prior hands-on testing experience, enabling informed oversight while not being a primary execution role.
Experience running multi-workstream delivery governance (e.g., steering committees, cross-team milestone management, and outcome tracking across vendors/partner teams).