UK

United Kingdom · Technology and data · Director/VP (16-20 years)

Director of Offensive Security

Here is the whole job, in plain words. What it is, what you decide, how you're judged, how people get here and where they go next. Then the part no course gives you: twelve AI tutors who learn your work.

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  • Experience bandDirector/VP (16-20 years)
  • Direct reports5-8 reports
  • Reports toChief Information Security Officer (CISO)
  • UK framework levelUsually a director, accountable for a division and its numbers

Also advertised as Head of Penetration Testing · VP, Red Team Operations · Chief Hacker (though we usually keep that one for internal jokes)

Built on 43,079 real UK job descriptions we analysed · grounded in qualifications employers recognise

Two short quizzes about you

1From this job to a course

The qualifications matched to this job

ATHE Level 7 Extended Diploma in Computing ATHE Ltd · Level 7 · covers 4 of 9 standards
Qualifi Level 7 Diploma in Cyber Security Qualifi Ltd · Level 7 · covers 1 of 9 standards
Qualifi Level 5 Extended Diploma in Cyber Security Qualifi Ltd · Level 5 · covers 7 of 9 standards
Qualifi Level 5 Diploma in Cyber Security Qualifi Ltd · Level 5 · covers 4 of 9 standards
Qualifi Level 5 Extended Diploma in Networking and Cyber Security Qualifi Ltd · Level 5 · covers 3 of 9 standards
Transcend Level 5 Diploma in Risk Management of Security Operations Transcend Awards · Level 5 · covers 2 of 9 standards

Matched from the standards this job is measured against: a suggestion, not an official ruling.

The units you would start with

Cyber Security Operations: Threat Analysis, Testing, and Incident Response ATHE Level 7 Extended Diploma in Computing
Security Management and Governance Qualifi Level 7 Diploma in Cyber Security
Incident Response, Investigations and Forensics Qualifi Level 5 Extended Diploma in Cyber Security
Strategic Leadership Qualifi Level 5 Diploma in Cyber Security
Security operations resilience testing tactics Transcend Level 5 Diploma in Risk Management of Security Operations

The future skills this job leans on

AI Fluency working with AI as a thinking partner
AI Governance Fluency using AI responsibly
Automation Fluency building AI into how work runs
Foresight Fluency seeing round the corner
Trust Fluency keeping the digital world safe
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Your Plan Illustration

Built for Director of Offensive Security

5 units that map to this job, from the qualifications that cover it.

  1. Cyber Security Operations: Threat Analysis, Testing, and Incident Response ATHE Ltd · covers 4 of 9 standards Level 7
  2. Security Management and Governance Qualifi Ltd · covers 1 of 9 standards Level 7
  3. Incident Response, Investigations and Forensics Qualifi Ltd · covers 7 of 9 standards Level 5
  4. Strategic Leadership Qualifi Ltd · covers 4 of 9 standards Level 5
  5. Security operations resilience testing tactics Transcend Awards · covers 2 of 9 standards Level 5
These are the real units behind this job, in the order they rank for it. Nothing here is marked done, because this plan has not been started by anyone yet. Yours would fill in as you go.

2AI and this work

Will AI change your work as a Director of Offensive Security?

Nobody can say exactly how. Here is what this job is being asked for next, and where to start.

The new skill this role is being asked for

  • AI-Driven Threat Emulation & Adaptive Red Teaming
Why each one is rising

The future skills this job leans on

We'll only ever tell you what we can actually back up. No hype, no scare tactics.

What happens when you start

Next, a free account. We build your Director of Offensive Security plan as you set up, starting with a Future Fluency module on using AI in your job. No card.

Your first Future Fluency module is free. After that, your AI tutor is £70 a month.

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3What this role really is

A Director of Offensive Security builds and leads an organisation's offensive security function, setting the strategy for finding and fixing vulnerabilities. The role involves managing budgets and leading penetration testers and red team operators, and presenting technical risk in clear terms to a CISO or Board.

4What you'd actually use

The tools this job runs on, and how well you'd need to know each one.

Kali Linux (Strategic Management) Architect

Defining standards for custom Kali builds, evaluating new tools for team deployment, and ensuring the team has the most effective offensive toolkit.

Nmap & Nessus (Enterprise Deployment) Architect

Managing enterprise-wide scanning deployments, integrating scanners into CI/CD pipelines, and setting policies for vulnerability identification and validation.

Metasploit Framework / Cobalt Strike (Strategic C2) Strategic

Evaluating and selecting C2 frameworks for red team operations, setting ethical guidelines for their use, and training the team on advanced evasion techniques.

Burp Suite Enterprise Edition (Methodology Standardisation) Strategic

Managing automated web application scanning across the organisation, setting testing methodologies, and developing custom BApp extensions for team-wide use.

PlexTrac / Dradis (Executive Reporting & Risk Management) Strategic

Selecting and implementing the central reporting platform for the department, creating executive dashboards, and tracking risk trends and remediation progress across all engagements.

Python (Internal Tooling & Automation) Architect

Setting coding standards for internal offensive security tools, managing a shared library of team-developed scripts, and driving automation initiatives for repetitive tasks.

5What you get to decide, and how that grows

Power in a job isn't your title. It's what you're allowed to decide. Here's how it grows as you move up.

The choiceComing in Where you are nowThe step above
Strategic Direction for Offensive Security No input, executes tasks defined by others. Proposes minor adjustments to existing methodologies for specific projects. Designs and recommends new testing methodologies for specific workstreams, consults on strategic direction.
Budget Allocation & Tooling No authority, uses assigned tools. Suggests specific tools for project use within existing budget. Recommends tool purchases up to £5K for specific projects, consults on larger investments.
Team Hiring & Development No involvement beyond receiving mentorship. Provides informal feedback on junior candidates. Mentors 0-2 junior team members, participates in interview panels for junior roles.
Risk Acceptance & Remediation Prioritisation Documents findings, no decision authority. Provides technical details for risk assessment, but doesn't decide acceptance. Recommends remediation priorities based on technical severity and exploitability.

6How you'll be judged

The scoreboard, and what is not on it. The hard targets, how often each is actually looked at, and the quiet signals that never reach a dashboard.

Organisational Risk Reduction (Time-to-Remediate)
The average time it takes for critical and high-severity vulnerabilities identified by your team to be fully fixed across the organisation.
Target · Achieve a 15% year-over-year reduction in average time-to-remediate for critical and high-severity findings.

If the average time to fix a critical vulnerability was 60 days last year, your goal is to get that down to 51 days this year. This shows your team's findings are actually getting actioned, not just reported.

Offensive Security Programme Coverage
The percentage of critical business applications, infrastructure, and cloud environments covered by regular penetration tests or red team engagements.
Target · Increase coverage by 10% annually, reaching 90% of identified critical assets within three years.

If we have 50 critical applications, and only 30 were tested last year, your target would be to get that to 35 this year, ensuring our most valuable assets aren't left exposed.

Team Utilisation & Productivity
The average billable or project-allocated time for your entire offensive security team, ensuring resources are effectively deployed.
Target · Maintain an average team utilisation rate of >80% (excluding training and R&D time).

If you have 30 team members, and they're collectively spending 85% of their time on active engagements or strategic projects, you're doing well. Below 70% might mean resource allocation issues or a lack of clear direction.

Strategic Service Offering Adoption
The successful development and adoption of new offensive security services (e.g., cloud-native pentesting, IoT security assessments) that address emerging risks.
Target · Launch at least one new strategic service offering annually, which accounts for 20% of new engagement requests within 18 months of launch.

You identify a gap in our cloud security testing. You build out a new cloud pentesting capability, and within 18 months, it's a standard offering that 20% of new internal requests are asking for. That's real impact.

Executive Influence & Trust
Your ability to effectively communicate complex security risks and strategic recommendations to the CISO, Board, and other executive leaders, leading to informed decisions and resource allocation.
  • Regularly invited to present at executive security steering committees or Board meetings. Your recommendations are consistently adopted. Other Directors seek your input on security-related strategic initiatives. You're seen as a trusted advisor, not just a technical expert.
Team Development & Retention
The growth, morale, and stability of your offensive security team, ensuring we attract and keep top talent in a highly competitive market.
  • Low voluntary team attrition rate (below industry average). High engagement scores in team surveys. Direct reports achieving promotions or significant certifications (e.g., OSCP, OSEP). Positive feedback from team members about mentorship and career development opportunities. You're building a reputation as a great leader to work for.
Innovation & Thought Leadership
Driving the adoption of new tools, methodologies, and research within the offensive security function, keeping us at the forefront of the threat landscape.
  • Your team is regularly contributing to internal knowledge sharing, presenting at internal 'lunch & learns', or even external conferences. We're experimenting with new attack techniques and tools. You're publishing internal whitepapers or contributing to industry best practices. We're not just following trends
  • we're helping to set them.

7Would you like it

Both sides. What people enjoy, and what grinds them down.

What people enjoy
Building & Shaping a World-Class Team

You'll spend a good chunk of your week on talent acquisition, mentoring sessions, performance reviews, and strategising career paths for your team. You'll get a real buzz from seeing a junior tester you hired grow into a Principal.

Successfully recruiting a highly sought-after Red Team Lead, then seeing them deliver a groundbreaking engagement within their first year, largely due to the environment you've created.

Driving Strategic Impact & Risk Reduction

Your days will involve reviewing high-level risk reports, presenting to the CISO on programme effectiveness, and making decisions that directly influence the company's security posture. You're not just finding bugs; you're preventing breaches.

After a major red team exercise, you present findings to the Board, securing an additional £2M budget for a critical security control that directly mitigates a top-tier risk.

Innovation & Staying Ahead of the Curve

You'll be constantly looking at new technologies (like AI in offensive security), new attack vectors (e.g., supply chain attacks), and figuring out how your team can test these proactively. This means R&D budget allocation and setting the research agenda.

Developing and deploying a new cloud-native offensive security framework that allows your team to test our complex AWS infrastructure far more effectively than before, giving us a real competitive edge.

What frustrates people
  • Strategic decisions getting overturned or significantly diluted by other departments due to 'business priorities'.
  • The constant battle for budget and resources, feeling like you're always justifying the value of offensive security.
  • Talent retention challenges in a red-hot market, and the effort required to continuously recruit top-tier hackers.
  • The bureaucracy and slow pace of change that can come with a larger organisation, especially when trying to implement new methodologies.
  • Dealing with 'compliance-only' clients or internal teams who just want a checkbox exercise, rather than genuine security improvement.
What this role does not give you
  • Daily hands-on penetration testing or red teaming.
  • A quiet, heads-down technical role with minimal stakeholder interaction.
  • An environment where every single vulnerability you find gets fixed immediately, regardless of cost or business impact.
  • Complete autonomy over the entire security budget; you'll own a significant portion, but it's part of a larger CISO budget.

8Who you work with

This role directly shapes the organisation's resilience against cyber threats. Your strategic decisions influence our security investment, our incident response capabilities, and ultimately, our ability to protect customer data and maintain business continuity. Get it right, and you're a hero; get it wrong, and the consequences are severe, impacting everything from share price to customer trust.

Inside the business
  • Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
  • Director of Security Operations
  • Director of Engineering
  • Head of Product
  • Legal & Compliance Teams
  • Internal Audit
  • Board Audit Committee
Outside the business
  • Regulatory Bodies (e.g., ICO, FCA)
  • Major Clients (for security assurance discussions)
  • Industry Peers and Forums
  • Strategic Security Vendors

9What you need before you start

Not a wish list. The things you would be expected to already have.

  • At least 12-16 years of progressive experience in offensive security, with a significant portion in a leadership or principal-level role.
  • Demonstrable experience building and leading high-performing technical teams, preferably in a fast-moving security environment.
  • Proven track record of defining and executing strategic security programmes, with measurable impact on risk reduction.
  • Extensive experience presenting to and influencing executive leadership and Board-level stakeholders.
  • Deep understanding of enterprise-level IT infrastructure, cloud environments, and modern application architectures from an offensive perspective.
  • Strong financial acumen, including experience managing multi-million-pound budgets and demonstrating ROI for security investments.

10What to practise next

Where the job is going, and what to do about it starting this week.

Cloud-Native Offensive Security Architectures

Our infrastructure is increasingly cloud-native, using serverless functions, containers, and complex microservices. Your team needs to be able to break these, which requires a deep understanding of cloud-specific attack vectors and security models.

Container Escape & Orchestration Exploitation · Serverless Function Exploitation · Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM) Bypass · Cloud Supply Chain Attacks

  • This quarter: Mandate advanced cloud security training (e.g., Certified Cloud Security Professional, specific cloud provider certifications) for all Lead and Principal Testers.
  • Next 6 months: Establish a dedicated 'Cloud Offensive Security' specialisation within your team, focusing on AWS, Azure, and GCP.
  • Next 12 months: Develop and deploy custom cloud-native offensive security tools and frameworks for your team.
  • Next 18 months: Ensure 75% of critical cloud assets are covered by advanced cloud-native penetration tests or red team exercises.

Quick win: Encourage your team to participate in cloud-focused CTFs (Capture The Flag) or bug bounty programmes. It's a great way to build practical skills in a safe environment.

11Staying current once you are in

What people here do to keep up
  • Regularly attend and speak at industry conferences (e.g., Black Hat, DEF CON, RSA Conference) to stay current on threats and network with peers.
  • Participate in executive leadership programmes or workshops focused on strategic decision-making, financial management, and organisational change.
  • Engage with industry working groups or standards bodies (e.g., OWASP, Cloud Security Alliance) to contribute to and shape the future of security.
  • Mentor emerging security leaders, both within your team and externally, to foster talent development in the wider industry.

12The rising capability

The rising capability

Zavmo analysis

What's rising in its place

This is where the work is heading, and the higher pay with it. Get fluent here and the shift stops being a threat and starts being your edge.

AI-Driven Threat Emulation & Adaptive Red Teaming

Adversaries are already using AI to automate reconnaissance, generate polymorphic malware, and craft highly convincing phishing campaigns. Our offensive capabilities must evolve to simulate these advanced, AI-powered threats and test our defences against them.

  • Generative AI for Attack Scenario Creation
  • Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Agents
  • AI for Evasion Techniques
  • Ethical AI in Offensive Security

13What you’ll use

What you’ll use

Skills this role draws on

Technical

  • Offensive Security Programme Design
  • Threat Intelligence Integration
  • Cloud Security Architecture (Offensive Perspective)
  • Secure Software Development Lifecycle (Offensive Integration)
  • Incident Response & Forensics (Offensive Insight)

14The pathway

The pathway

How you actually get there, here

How you become one varies far more by country than what one does. This is the UK route. Most people take one of these ways in; the right one depends on where you're starting from.

  1. 1

    Principal Penetration Tester / Red Team Lead

    5-8 years at Principal/Lead level

    Skills to master

    • Moving from deep technical expertise to strategic programme ownership, managing a small team, influencing cross-functional leaders, and developing new service offerings.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Successfully led multiple complex red team engagements from inception to executive debrief.
    • Mentored and developed at least 3-5 senior or lead-level offensive security professionals.
    • Developed and implemented a new offensive security methodology or tool that significantly improved team efficiency.
    • Presented strategic security insights to senior leadership or external clients on a regular basis.
  2. 2

    Head of Security Engineering / Security Architect (with offensive focus)

    7-10 years in a leadership/architect role

    Skills to master

    • Bridging the gap between offensive insights and defensive engineering, designing secure systems, and influencing security architecture at an enterprise level. This path requires a strong offensive background but also deep defensive knowledge.

    You're ready to move on when

    • Designed and implemented security controls based on red team findings, significantly reducing attack surface.
    • Led the security architecture for major cloud migrations or new product launches.
    • Demonstrated ability to translate offensive security intelligence into actionable engineering requirements.
    • Managed a team of security engineers or architects responsible for secure system design.

15Where this role leads

The long view: This role can lead to CISO positions, or to heading up a security consulting practice advising several clients.

The ten Future Fluencies

Zavmo analysis

The credential is what you can do today. These are what keep you valuable.

A qualification proves you can do the job as it's defined today. These ten are what decide whether you're still the obvious person for it in five years. They're the capabilities employers are now writing into senior roles faster than people are learning them. Zavmo weaves them through whatever you study, so you come out with both: the credential and the fluency.

The highlighted ones are the Fluencies your role leans on hardest, from how Director of Offensive Security is actually changing.

Where it leads

Roles this leads to

How you would learn this

One to one, on the work you already do

A tutor sets the task against your own job and marks the reasoning, at your pace. There is no cohort to fall behind.

A lesson from Cyber Security Operations: Threat Analysis, Testing, and Incident Response, worked against Director of Offensive Security.

Cyber Security Operations: Threat Analysis, Testing, and Incident Response Level 7

Applied to your work in Director of Offensive Security

This unit aims to enable learners to design and conduct security testing strategies to evaluate the resilience of systems, middleware, and applications against cyber threats. Learners will also develop security architectures using secure coding practices and threat modelling techniques.

How the thinking builds
  1. 1 Remember
  2. 2 Understand
  3. 3 Apply
  4. 4 Analyse
  5. 5 Evaluate
  6. 6 Create
An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.

It is £70 a month, billed monthly. Your free first module is Future Fluency, and you can cancel any time.

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See Your Progress Grow Illustration
Director of Offensive Security
  • Offensive Security Programme Design
  • Threat Intelligence Integration
  • Cloud Security Architecture (Offensive Perspective)
  • Secure Software Development Lifecycle (Offensive Integration)
  • Incident Response & Forensics (Offensive Insight)
This is your Mind Palace on learn.zavmo.ai. Every skill above comes from this role's own record, not an example borrowed from another job. A node lights up when you evidence it, and what you build stays yours between jobs. That is the part a course cannot do.

16The detail, folded away

Everything else the record holds

The career branches in full, how AI is already showing up in the day-to-day, and the questions people ask about this job. Here when you want them, out of the way while you decide.

Where it leads next, rung by rung

Where it leads

The career path, and where it branches

Director of Offensive Security is a start, not a ceiling. Each step below asks for new skills and hands back more autonomy.

  1. Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

    3-5 years as Director of Offensive Security

    From leading a specific security function to owning the entire enterprise security strategy, governance, risk, and compliance.

    • Defining enterprise-wide security architecture and controls.
    • Managing a diverse security organisation (SecOps, GRC, AppSec, Offensive Security).
    • Driving security culture and awareness across the entire company.
    • Engaging with investors and external stakeholders on security posture.
Working with AI on the job

Working with AI

Where AI is starting to help

As the Director of Offensive Security, your job is to scale impact, not just individual effort. AI isn't here to replace your team; it's here to supercharge them, freeing up their time for the truly complex, creative hacking that scanners and basic tools miss. It's about making your entire function more efficient, more effective, and more strategic.

Imagine your team spending less time on the mundane, repetitive tasks that bog down every engagement. With AI, we're talking about automating the grunt work, allowing your Principal Testers to focus on novel attack paths and your Leads to spend more time mentoring. For you, it means better data for strategic decisions and a more agile, high-impact team.

Automated Recon & Asset Discovery

Use AI-powered platforms to continuously map your organisation's attack surface, identifying new assets, exposed services, and potential entry points far faster than manual methods. This means your team always has the most up-to-date picture of what needs testing.

Intelligent Vulnerability Correlation

Feed findings from all your tools (Nmap, Burp, Nessus, custom scripts) into an AI engine that spots patterns and suggests complex attack chains. This helps your team find those tricky, high-impact vulnerabilities that come from combining multiple low-severity issues, which is often where the real risk lies.

AI-Assisted Strategic Reporting

Leverage generative AI, trained on our internal templates and your team's previous reports, to draft initial executive summaries, impact statements, and remediation recommendations. This frees up your Leads and Principals to focus on the technical details and strategic implications, rather than spending days on report formatting and wording.

Predictive Threat Intelligence & Trend Analysis

Use AI to analyse vast amounts of threat intelligence data, predicting emerging attack techniques and identifying which assets are most likely to be targeted. This allows you to proactively adjust your offensive security strategy, ensuring your team is testing for the threats that actually matter, before they hit.

Common questions

Common questions

How do you become a Director of Offensive Security?

Common routes in include Principal Penetration Tester / Red Team Lead (5-8 years at Principal/Lead level) and Head of Security Engineering / Security Architect (with offensive focus) (7-10 years in a leadership/architect role). Times vary with prior experience.

Where can a Director of Offensive Security progress to?

This role can lead on to Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) (3-5 years as Director of Offensive Security), depending on the skills you build.

What new skills matter most for a Director of Offensive Security?

Increasingly, AI-Driven Threat Emulation & Adaptive Red Teaming. These are the skills our record of this role lists as growing.

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17Where to go from here

Other roles at Level 7

Same depth of qualification, different job. Useful if the work appeals but this particular role does not.

 More jobs in technology and data

Stay in the field you know and move sideways rather than up.
If you leave this industry

Skills built in this role transfer across most industries, particularly finance, tech, government, and critical national infrastructure. Demand for leaders who can defend against sophisticated cyber threats continues to grow.

This role profile is © 2026 Growth Engineering Technologies Ltd. Built from UK occupational standards and regulated qualification data, and written for Zavmo.

You're not behind. You're right on time. The shift is only just beginning. Your role won't look the same in two years. Be the one who leads the change, not the one it happens to. Start my Director of Offensive Security plan, free What happens next: a free account, then we build your plan as you set up. No card. Build your plan, see your roadmap and meet the twelve tutors matched to you. All free. When you're ready to start learning, it's £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.