That’s what we want you to solve as we scale. We want an internal environment where:

• our confidence in our posture is high, and justified;
• people get the tools and access they need, quickly, with clear governance over what “need” means;
• we’re secure by default, not because someone remembered;
• “why do we have this?” and “is it still good value?” are easy to answer for any tool;
• audits get more boring each year because the evidence already exists.

We want people at Zen to finish an IT or security request thinking “wow, that was easy”, and occasionally “I didn’t know we needed that, but I’m glad we have it”.

What the role looks like in practice

This is a new role at Zen, so part of the job is defining what it looks like. These are the problems we already know you’ll be working on.

🔑 Identity and access

We still grant access to several systems by hand when someone joins. You could improve the checklist. We’d rather you built the workflow that makes the checklist disappear.

You’ll own internal identity and access: Google Workspace, SSO, MFA, groups, permissions and "least privilege" as a principle. Access should follow people as they join, move and leave, not depend on someone remembering to remove it.

🧹 SaaS sprawl

We use a lot of software. Some of it is essential. Some probably isn’t. Some have 80 licences and 37 active users.

You’ll build the definitive view of our software and service estate (what we use, who owns it, who has access, what it costs, when it renews) and work with teams and vendors to improve how we buy, renew and retire tools.

🛡️ Security that works

Policies are useful. Policies people understand and follow are far more useful.

You’ll define and maintain our IT and security policies, then turn them into working processes, technical controls and training that sticks: access reviews, vulnerability management, external testing, incident processes and an easy way to report concerns.

📋 Trust, assurance and compliance

Customers increasingly want evidence that we take security seriously. You’ll make that evidence easy to provide: security questionnaires, audit evidence, Cyber Essentials and future certifications, risk management and governance. Certifications should follow real controls, not stand in for them.

Rather than answering every questionnaire from scratch, you’ll build a reusable, increasingly self-service trust process. Where security meets privacy, you’ll work closely with our Legal and Data Protection advisors.

💻 The device fleet

Devices need to be secure, patched, encrypted and accounted for wherever people work, and not all of them are company-owned. You’ll set a proportionate approach to personal devices alongside endpoint management for our own fleet. Our People Team handles ordering and delivery; you’ll make sure every device is set up and provisioned securely, remotely, through to retirement.

When a critical vulnerability lands, we want to know which devices are affected, what needs to happen, and that it actually happened within our 14-day patching window.

🚨 When something goes wrong

Things will go wrong. A vendor has an incident. A device falls out of compliance. Someone finds access that shouldn’t exist.

Your job isn’t to guarantee nothing happens. It’s to make sure we respond well: clear ownership, good communication, recorded decisions, and the underlying issue actually fixed. We already have an established incident process for our product; you’ll extend it to everything else.

What this role doesn’t own

It covers corporate IT and security, not the platform we build as our product.

Product and platform security sits with our Foundations Lead and Engineering. You’ll coordinate with them on company-wide initiatives such as least privilege, and may drive them as overall lead.

The wider employee lifecycle sits with our People Team. You’ll own the systems, access and devices that support it, and help automate it where you can.

Internal data architecture and bespoke data tooling sit with your peer in Business Systems. Different lens, often the same problems: you’ll work together a lot.

Final budget decisions on tools and services sit with me and other senior leaders. You’ll provide the visibility and recommendations to make them well.

What you might like or dislike

Every place makes trade-offs based on what it values and where it is in its journey ⚖️. Here are some that might help you decide whether this is the right role for you. If we end up chatting, feel free to dig into any of them. Some are recent changes in our approach and may still be work in progress when you join.

🛠️ How we work

• Build systems, not queues. We see IT as a systems problem, not an administration problem. If something happens repeatedly, challenge whether it still needs a person, whether the answer is scripting, APIs, workflow tools, AI, native platform automation or simply a better process. This is hands-on: you might discuss security posture with leadership in the morning and fix an access workflow in the afternoon. Either way, today’s fix should shrink tomorrow’s workload.
• Proven tools for the obvious, experimentation for the rest. Where a mature tool does the job well, use it rather than building our own. Where nothing does, we’d rather you tried something new, AI included, than accept friction simply because that’s how it’s always been done.
• Security that enables the business. We want stronger security without theatre or needless friction. That takes judgement: telling a meaningful risk from a theoretical one, and both from one we can reasonably accept. Sometimes the answer is to lock something down, sometimes a better process, sometimes to accept the risk and move on. Whatever it is, you’ll explain clearly what’s happening, why it matters and what happens next.
• Be visible and own the outcome. IT and security usually only get noticed when access breaks or someone is told no. We’d like you to change that: a recognisable, approachable go-to person who