Fresha25d ago

Head of Security

United Kingdom·London,LondonFull-timeexecutive

EngineeringSecurity

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Overview

The AI-powered OS for beauty, wellness and self-care About FreshaFresha is the AI-powered operating system for the global beauty, wellness and self-care industry, connecting and powering everything from salons and barbers to spas, medspas, fitness studios and health practices.Trusted by millions…

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The AI-powered OS for beauty,

wellness and self-care

About Fresha

Fresha is the AI-powered operating system for the global beauty, wellness and self-care industry, connecting and powering everything from salons and barbers to spas, medspas, fitness studios and health practices.

Trusted by millions of consumers and businesses worldwide. Fresha is used by 140,000+ businesses and 450,000+ stylists and professionals worldwide, processing over 1 billion appointments to date.

The company is headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with 15 global offices located across North America, EMEA and APAC.

Fresha allows consumers to discover, book and pay for beauty and wellness appointments with local businesses via its marketplace, while beauty and wellness businesses and professionals use an all-in-one platform to manage their entire operations with an intuitive business software and financial technology solutions.

Fresha’s ecosystem gives merchants everything they need to run their business seamlessly by facilitating appointment bookings, point-of-sale, customer records management, marketing automation, loyalty, beauty products inventory and team management.

The consumer marketplace unlocks revenue potential for partner businesses by leveraging the power of online bookings and automated marketing through mobile apps and advanced integrations with major tech brands including Instagram, Facebook and Google.

Reports to: VP of Security, IT and Compliance

We're looking for someone to own security end-to-end at Fresha. You'll shape the security strategy alongside the VP, build and run the controls that protect the business, and be the person everyone — engineers, execs, auditors, customers — looks to regarding security questions.

You'll work alongside the Head of Compliance (who sits under the same VP) as a peer. They own the frameworks, the audits, and the evidence. You own the actual security posture, the tooling, and the response. The two roles need each other to succeed, and we expect you to work closely together rather than carve out territory.

We're a payments business operating in a regulated space, with HIPAA and ISO 27001 behind us and PCI DSS, GDPR, and SOC 2 Type II ahead of us this year. The security bar is not theoretical.

To foster a collaborative environment that thrives on face-to-face interactions and teamwork, this role will be based in our dog-friendly office 5 days per week in London: The Bower, 207-122, Old Street, London EC1V 9NR.

Security strategy and roadmap

Shape the security strategy together with the VP — the VP sets direction at the exec level, you bring the ground truth, the technical depth, and the detailed plan that turns that direction into something real

Own the security roadmap that falls out of it: what we're building, what we're retiring, what we're deferring, and why

Make the call on where to invest day-to-day: tooling, headcount, external services, automation — within the strategic envelope agreed with the VP

Translate that roadmap into something the exec team can actually read and fund

Controls and protections

Deploy and run the security controls across the estate — endpoint, network, cloud, identity, application

Make sure controls are actually working, not just deployed — continuous validation, not annual tick-boxing

Partner with Engineering and IT to get controls in early, rather than bolted on after the fact

Penetration testing and vulnerability management

Run the regular external pentest cadence — application, infrastructure — and make sure findings are triaged and closed

Own the vulnerability management programme: scanning, prioritisation, SLAs, and closure

Work with the Head of Compliance on the evidence side — they need clean data for audits, you need clean closure on the underlying issues. Same data, different purposes

Incident response

Own the IR process end-to-end: detection, triage, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident review

Run the on-call model, the playbooks, the tabletop exercises, and the tooling behind them

Be the person in the room when something real happens, and the person writing the honest post-mortem afterwards

Threat intelligence and threat modelling

Stand up a threat intelligence capability — somewhere past incidents, near-misses, industry reports, and internal telemetry get captured, tagged, and made useful

Build this into a threat intel data warehouse that actually informs decisions: future threat modelling, control design, roadmap prioritisation, and tabletop scenarios. Not a dashboard nobody reads

Run threat modelling as a routine practice, not a one-off — including automated threat modelling using AI against designs, code, and infrastructure changes

Emerging threats

Keep a forward view on where the threat landscape is heading, especially around LLMs: prompt injection, model abuse, AI-augmented vulnerability scanning by attackers, and exposure of sensitive data through AI tooling

Don't just react to what's hitting us today — make sure we're not blindsided by what's hitting everyone in 12 months

Feed that view into the strategy conversation with the VP, and turn it into concrete roadmap items rather than slide decks

Security training and awareness

Own the security-specific training content: phishing simulations, secure coding for engineers, threat modelling training, IR tabletop participation, and role-based training for anyone handling cardholder data, PHI, or other sensitive material

Partner with the Head of Compliance — they run the overall training programme, cadence, and evidence; you bring the security substance and keep it current with the threat landscape

Make the training actually useful. Engineers should walk away knowing something they didn't before, not clicking through slides to get a completion tick

Automation and AI

Look at every recurring task in this function and ask "why is a human still doing this?" — triage, alert enrichment, vulnerability prioritisation, evidence gathering, threat modelling, IR runbooks

Push existing tooling as far as it'll go, and fill the gaps with scripts, workflows, or AI where it makes sense

Use LLMs sensibly for drafting, review, analysis, and automation — while being clear-eyed about where they introduce new risks we have to manage ourselves

Treat the function's operating model as a product: fewer manual rituals each quarter, better coverage, faster response

Security advisory

Be the go-to person for security questions across the business — architecture reviews, vendor assessments, new products, acquisitions, anything risky

Give engineers a straight answer and a path forward, not a ticket queue and a policy link

You've led security at a company operating under real regulatory pressure — payments, healthcare, financial services, or similar

You've run incident response for real incidents, not just exercises, and you've written the post-mortems

You understand modern attack surfaces: cloud, SaaS, identity, supply chain, application — and you don't reduce security to any one of them

You've built or meaningfully improved a threat intel or threat modelling capability, not just consumed vendor feeds
You're fluent with AI tools and comfortable building automation. "I'll wait for someone to build it for me" isn't the right mindset — but neither is "let's put an LLM on everything."You know the difference

You're comfortable co-owning strategy with a VP — bringing strong opinions, challenging when it matters, and aligning once a direction is set

You can hold your own with engineers on technical depth and with execs on business framing

Bonus: experience with payments/PCI environments, offensive security background, or a track record of measurably reducing manual security work through automation

You'll have a team to lead from day one, with scope to grow it as the roadmap demands. You'll work closely with the VP on strategy, and with the Head of Compliance, IT, Engineering, Infrastructure, and Product on execution. You'll be in front of customers and auditors often enough that polish matters. Expect to spend real time hands-on — in tooling, in incidents, in design reviews — not just managing.

Screen Stage - Video-call with a member from the Talent Team (45-60min)

1st Stage - Interview with the VP of Security, IT & Compliance (60min)

Final Stage - Video interview with CTO (60min) and Head of Talent (30min)

We aim to finalise the entire interview process and deliver feedback within 4 weeks.

Every job application received is reviewed manually by our talent team. While we strive to assess applications within 7 days, the sheer volume of talented individuals expressing interest may occasionally extend this timeframe

Inclusive workforce

At Fresha, we are creating a culture where individuals of all backgrounds feel comfortable.

We want all Fresha people to feel included and truly empowered to contribute fully to our vision and goals. Everyone who applies will receive fair consideration for employment.

We do not discriminate based on race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, gender identity, national origin, disability, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics in the location in which the candidate is applying.

If you have any accessibility requirements that would make you more comfortable during the interview process and/or once you join, please let us know so that we can support you.