Principal DevSecOps Consultant

This is a rare opportunity to set the engineering standard for a regulated payments organisation from the ground up. The position leads an independent DevSecOps maturity assessment across multiple engineering teams, then shapes and guides the phased improvement roadmap that follows. Maturity currently varies significantly between teams, and the goal is not to adopt what exists today but to define a new, higher standard. Your assessment will be the first deliverable of the engagement and the baseline against which all future progress is measured, giving you real influence with engineering leadership, the CISO and the risk committee. If you enjoy evidence-based diagnosis, translating findings into practical change, and staying close enough to see that change stick, this role offers both strategic visibility and lasting impact.

Responsibilities

• Conduct an independent, team-by-team assessment of CI/CD, cloud and Kubernetes maturity, evaluating each team in its own context rather than against a single blanket standard
• Benchmark engineering performance using the DORA and SPACE frameworks, establishing an evidence-based baseline drawn from real delivery data rather than self-reported measures
• Perform root-cause analysis across incident history to identify the constraints that genuinely slow delivery and affect reliability
• Evaluate security practice across the full software development lifecycle, including static and dynamic application security testing, dependency and container scanning, secrets management, access control and release governance
• Define the maturity baseline and success criteria jointly with stakeholders, as these are intentionally undefined at the outset of the engagement
• Produce a prioritised, phased improvement roadmap with clear sequencing, effort estimates and dependencies, rather than a standalone list of recommendations
• Advise on governance for AI-assisted engineering, covering tool permissions, least-privilege credentials, human approval gates and audit trails
• Map findings and recommendations to relevant control frameworks to support compliance and audit readiness
• Present findings and progress to senior engineering leadership, the CISO and the risk committee, ensuring conclusions withstand scrutiny from both technical and risk perspectives
• Coach engineering leads through adoption of the new standard, building internal capability so improvements are sustained after the engagement ends
• Track roadmap adoption and adjust priorities as teams progress

Experience and education

Must-Have

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 5 years in DevSecOps, platform security or engineering effectiveness
• Demonstrable experience running maturity assessments or engineering health checks across multiple teams, with published or referenceable outputs (primary screening criterion)
• Strong hands-on knowledge of CI/CD pipeline security, AWS cloud security and Kubernetes security
• Practical experience applying DORA metrics to measure and improve delivery performance
• Experience working in financial services or another regulated sector
• Confidence presenting findings and recommendations to a CISO and risk committee

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent demonstrable experience

Advantageous

• Experience applying the SPACE framework to engineering productivity

• Control mapping experience against SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001

• Exposure to AI agent governance and secure use of AI-assisted engineering tools

• Threat modelling experience

• Working knowledge of POPIA and South African data protection requirements

• Security certification such as CISSP, CISM or AWS Certified Security Specialty