Director - Infrastructure Security Engineering

Job Title: Director, Infrastructure Security Engineering

GCL: F

Introduction to role:

Are you ready to secure the digital backbone that powers the discovery, development, and delivery of life‑changing medicines? Can you turn strategy into engineered controls across large-scale enterprises while leading a high-performing distributed team?

Based in Chennai, India, you will lead Infrastructure Security Engineering across operational technology, device protection, email safeguards, and network defense. Your work will safeguard our scientists, manufacturing sites, data, and global operations—creating the resilience that keeps vital medicines moving to patients.

You will set the vision and drive delivery for security capabilities at scale. You will work with product, engineering, manufacturing, regulatory, and Cyber Defense groups. Together, you will turn business priorities and threat intelligence into secure, reliable, automated solutions. These solutions reduce risk and speed up the business.

Accountabilities:

• Security Leadership: Define the strategy, operating model, roadmap, and governance for Endpoint, Email, and network protection to align with business priorities and threat landscape.

• Solution Delivery: Lead the build, implementation, testing, operation, and ongoing improvement of security solutions, ensuring measurable outcomes in resilience, detectability, and recoverability.

• Security Capabilities: Drive OT security engineering, ICS, SBCs, endpoint protection and detection, protection of electronic communications, network segmentation, firewalls, secure connectivity, IDS/IPS—uplifting coverage and control efficiency across the enterprise.

• Automation and Scale: Promote automation to improve the scalability, consistency, and efficiency of security engineering and compliance activities, shortening cycle times and reducing human error.

• Technical Mentorship and Governance: Provide expert mentorship to senior collaborators, architects, engineering teams, vendors, and strategic partners; embed policies, standards, and build patterns that enable secure-by-design delivery.

• People Leadership: Lead and develop a distributed team of security engineers, encouraging collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement; attract, grow, and retain diverse technical talent.

• Risk and Resilience: Translate threats and vulnerabilities into prioritized engineering backlogs; improve prevention, detection, and response across endpoints, networks, email, and OT; strengthen the resilience of manufacturing and operational environments.

• Collaborator Partnership: Collaborate with business, technology, architecture, compliance, and information security teams to integrate controls into platforms and products, realizing security outcomes that enable safe, fast adoption of new technologies.

• Continuous Improvement and Metrics: Establish outcome-based metrics and service health indicators; drive retrospectives and learning loops to continually mature capabilities and reduce operational toil.

Essential Skills/Experience:

• Enterprise Security Leadership: Significant experience leading infrastructure or cyber security engineering in a large, complex, global organisation.

• Domain Expertise: Good experience in at least two of the following: Endpoint Security, Email Security, Network Security, Cloud Security, Security Operations, or Infrastructure Architecture.

• Technical Capability: Experience with working in OT environments, EDR/XDR, SIEM/SOAR, vulnerability management, firewalls, IDS/IPS, secure web gateways, email security platforms, and network security controls.

• Security Engineering: Demonstrable ability to compose, build, configure, test, implement, and operate enterprise security solutions.

• Strategy and Governance: Background in developing security plans, timelines, guidelines, criteria, protocols, and control frameworks.

• Threat and Risk Management: Good understanding of cyber threats, vulnerabilities, attack techniques, and preventive, detective, and corrective controls.

• Automation: Experience with scripting, systems administration, automated environment provisioning, configuration management, or security process automation.

• Collaborator Influence: Ability to communicate complex security topics and influence collaborators at technical, strategic, and executive levels.

• Regulated Environments: Experience working within regulated, highly controlled, or rule-focused environments is advantageous.

• Security Standards and Frameworks: Familiarity with relevant security frameworks and standards, such as NIST Cybersecurity Framework, NIST SP 800-82, IEC 62443, ISO 27001, CIS Controls, ISA/IEC standards, and applicable pharmaceutical or manufacturing security requirements.

• Strategy and Governance: Experience developing security technology strategies, roadmaps, policies, standards, procedures, control frameworks, and governance models.

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cyber Security, Engineering, Automation, Industrial Control Systems, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.

• Certifications: A recognised cyber security, technology, or OT security certification, or demonstrable progress towards one, such as CISSP, CISM, CCSP, GICSP, GRID, standards related to industrial automation security like ISA/IEC 62443, GIAC, SABSA, AWS Security, Microsoft Security, or equivalent.

• Strategic Leadership: Translate business priorities, risk, and threat intelligence into clear security strategies and outcomes.

• Technical Expertise: Strong knowledge of security architecture, infrastructure, cloud, identity, networks, and security controls.

• Risk-Based Decision-Making: Prioritise threats and balance security, resilience, cost, usability, and business needs.

• Communication and Collaboration: Influence and collaborate effectively with technical teams, business collaborators, senior leaders, and external partners.

• People Leadership: Build hard-working teams and develop technical talent.

• Delivery Focus: Lead complex security programmes across multiple teams and geographies.

Desirable Skills/Experience:

• Deep experience with OT in manufacturing environments, including ICS/SCADA, safety instrumented systems, and ISA/IEC 62443 implementation.

• Demonstrated success implementing Zero Trust network segmentation and secure connectivity at enterprise scale.

• Security engineering for hybrid cloud and edge, including container platforms and Kubernetes networking and policy controls.

• Hands-on automation using infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and policy-as-code to codify controls and compliance.

• Experience integrating engineering with Cyber Defense for threat-led control validation, detection engineering, and purple teaming.

• Proven partnership with product, platform, and manufacturing teams to embed secure-by-design patterns and accelerate delivery.

• Experience supporting audits and regulatory inspections in pharmaceutical or highly regulated manufacturing.

• Contributions to security communities or standards bodies, authorship or speaking at industry forums.

Why AstraZeneca:

Work where bold science meets modern engineering. Here, your expertise secures the platforms that help researchers, clinicians, and operators move faster together—often with unexpected teams in the same room unleashing bold thinking. We are intentionally inclusive and collaborative, combining diverse perspectives across geographies to solve complex problems with simplicity. With significant investment in digital, data, AI and automation, you will shape how security enables innovation at scale while directly protecting the continuity of medicines for patients. We value kindness alongside ambition, experimentation alongside rigor, and we back our people to take ownership and grow.

Call to Action:

If you’re ready to lead at global scale and build the security backbone of a data‑driven enterprise that changes lives, take the next step and apply to shape what comes next.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

Date Posted

Closing Date

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity.  We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills.  We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.  We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics.  We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.