SD Worx is a leading European provider of Payroll & HR services with global reach. We have offices in Europe and Mauritius. Our goal? We bring people solutions to life and turn HR into a value source for our clients and their people.

Our people solutions span the entire employee journey, from salary payment to attracting, rewarding, and developing talent. Are you ready to join us?

About the role:

As Security Engineer, you play a critical role in safeguarding SD Worx Group’s IT landscape and enabling business objectives through robust, future‑proof security capabilities. You ensure that security controls across infrastructure, cloud and workplace environments are not only effective, but continuously adapted to evolving threats, technologies and organisational priorities.

You take end‑to‑end accountability for the implementation, effectiveness and continuous improvement of security controls, applied policies and standards across the Group. Beyond operational excellence, you actively challenge and improve cross‑functional security processes, contribute to the definition of new ways of working, and influence security priorities that impact SD Worx goals.

Operating at the heart of the Security Operations and Engineering capability, you combine deep technical expertise with strong analytical, advisory and coaching skills. You proactively capture new security evolutions, translate them into actionable improvements, and embed them into the wider IT and business ecosystem spanning more than 26 countries.

You play a key role in advancing SD Worx’ vulnerability management capability by evolving it from tool‑driven scanning to a risk‑contextual, intelligence‑led discipline that aligns technical exposure with business impact and threat actor behaviour.

Which tasks can you expect?

Security Engineering & Operational Excellence

• Lead advanced security reviews, threat analysis and risk assessments across infrastructure, cloud and workplace platforms, translating findings into concrete improvements.
• Design and improve security monitoring, detection and response capabilities, including metrics that demonstrate control effectiveness and risk reduction to senior stakeholders.
• Drive improvements to security infrastructure and configurations (e.g. Identity & Access Management, system hardening, SIEM, IDS/IPS/XDR), challenging existing standards and proposing new controls where needed (CIS benchmarking knowledge strongly valued).
• Oversee and continuously improve vulnerability management, patching and secure configuration processes, ensuring timely risk mitigation across the estate. This includes prioritizing vulnerabilities based on exploitability, exposure, attacker intent and business criticality rather than severity alone, enabling informed and outcome‑driven remediation decisions.
• Perform complex incident response and forensic investigations, coordinating with cross‑functional teams, capturing lessons learned and embedding structural improvements to prevent recurrence.
• Participate in a compensated on‑call rotation, providing 2nd or 3rd line escalation support when required.

Process & Cross‑Functional Impact

• Rethink and optimize end‑to‑end security processes across IT domains, value chains and external partners, setting or revising roles, responsibilities and operational agreements.
• Ensure Group‑wide security policies, standards and frameworks (ISO, CIS, SD Worx policies) remain relevant, are effectively implemented, and align with both regulatory and business needs.
• Influence and advise platform, cloud, workplace and application teams on secure‑by‑design principles, architectural decisions and risk‑based trade‑offs.
• Contribute to organizational security maturity by defining standard operating procedures, SOC playbooks and scalable engineering practices.

Outside‑In Thinking, Innovation & Advisory

• Proactively research and interpret emerging threats, technologies and regulatory evolutions, translating them into actionable guidance for SD Worx’ complex customer and business contexts.
• Advise and support innovation initiatives and strategic IT programs, ensuring security enables business growth rather than constrains it.
• Act as a trusted advisor for a broad portfolio of internal customers with diverse risk profiles, balancing security, usability and operational efficiency.
• Explore and introduce the responsible use of AI‑assisted security capabilities to augment human decision‑making, improve signal‑to‑noise ratio in SecOps, and accelerate vulnerability analysis, threat correlation and incident triage.

Connecting & Influence

• Build a broad internal network to influence decisions, align priorities and negotiate solutions on complex security topics with senior stakeholders.
• Act as a role model within the security and IT community, supporting knowledge sharing.
• Actively promotes a human‑in‑the‑loop security operating model where AI supports analysts, without eroding accountability, judgement or ethical responsibility.
• Represent the security function in cross‑country forums, internal communities and external events, strengthening SD Worx’ security credibility and thought leadership.

Our expectations:

Thinking and Acting Outside‑In

• Visibly anticipates the impact of technological, regulatory and threat evolutions and actively reshapes security approaches accordingly.
• Challenges existing expertise, tools and ways of working, and actively introduces new knowledge into the organisation and value chain.
• Delivers win‑win solutions that improve customer trust, service quality and organisational resilience.
• Recognises that vulnerability and threat landscapes are emergent and non‑linear, and continuously adapts prioritisation and response models accordingly.

Agility

• Proactively identifies weaknesses in service or security delivery and drives structural improvements across teams.
• Balances operational stability with innovation, adapting quickly to changing business and risk landscapes.
• Continuously builds expertise through learning, experimentation and collaboration with other senior experts.
• Actively experiments with automation and AI‑driven workflows to improve speed, accuracy and scalability of SecOps without increasing operational risk.

Connecting

• Builds and leverages strong cross‑functional and international networks to influence outcomes at scale.
• Enables understanding of complex security themes to colleagues and stakeholders effectively, including management level.
• Acts with authority and credibility in internal and external interactions.

What do you have to offer?

Essential

• Proven 5 to 7 years of experience in cybersecurity engineering and operations, with deep hands‑on expertise in security tooling and platforms (SIEM, detection/response, IAM, hardening).
• Strong understanding of infrastructure, cloud and workplace security architectures and security operations concepts.
• Ability to translate technical risk into business‑relevant insights for diverse stakeholders.
• Solid knowledge of network protocols, identity technologies and Active Directory.
• Professional English proficiency (additional European languages are an asset).
• Demonstrated experience with vulnerability management programmes, including risk‑based prioritisation, remediation governance and stakeholder alignment.

Desirable

• Recognized security certifications or clear ambition to obtain them.
• Scripting and automation skills to improve security efficiency and scalability.
• Demonstrated drive to shape secure engineering practices and influence beyond own technical scope.
• Comfortable operating autonomously and communicating with confidence at senior level.
• Experience or strong interest in applying AI or machine‑learning techniques to security operations, detection engineering, vulnerability analysis or automation.

Please be informed that upon successful completion of the interview process, you will be required to submit a recent Certificate of Character, and you will undergo a background check as part of our standard legal procedures.

From many places, we work as one, moving from better to best together.

SD Worx embraces diversity in the workplace. Diversity brings inspiration and innovation to our company. We particularly welcome applications from qualified talent, regardless of origin, nationality, gender, skin color, ethnic and social background, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, or stage of life.