---
title: 'Head of Information Security at Valarian Technologies Limited'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-information-security-valarian-technologies-limited-london-6s0085a6fswt'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Head of Information Security at Valarian Technologies Limited

- **Company:** Valarian Technologies Limited
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/valarian/03c4befa-e6b6-48e5-81e7-e83f0ac517d7

## Job description

Valarian Technologies is a dual-use technology company building critical tools to safeguard the future in an era of evolving global security challenges. We're rethinking security beyond traditional military domains, addressing asymmetric threats that impact our technological advantage, economic strength, and democratic institutions. We build Acra – the platform foundation for everything we do as a dual-use technology company. The platform’s name, rooted in the Greek word for citadel (or, fortress), reflects the design and purpose of our infrastructure-agnostic secure enclaves: protecting critical data. Some of the government and commercial workflows include: increased operational resiliency for mission-critical systems and functions; enabling organisations to more quickly and widely adopt emerging technologies while ensuring the integrity of their intellectual property; information flow during disaster response scenarios, and zero-trust / least-privilege environments for M&A, attorney-client privileged communications, etc. And we’ve only scratched the surface. At our core, we're driven by a shared mission and a belief in making a tangible impact on our world. Whether you join our London HQ or the wider global organisation, you’ll be a part of collaborative, high-performing teams, creating cutting-edge software, platforms, and infrastructure. The Role: We are seeking an ambitious, technical Head of Information Security (Deputy CISO) to take full ownership of Valarian’s internal security posture, enterprise risk framework, and product compliance. Ideal for a Senior Security Manager, Architect, or Director stepping into their first CISO-level leadership role, you will embed security into our engineering culture, maintain customer trust, and ensure full compliance across global enterprise and defense standards. What you’ll do: Drive Security Strategy & Governance: Design and execute Valarian’s Zero-Trust security roadmap, policies, risk assessments, and executive reporting for leadership and the board. Lead Compliance & Certifications: Own end-to-end audit readiness for enterprise and defense frameworks, including SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus, and NIST 800-53. Partner with Product & Engineering: Embed DevSecOps and secure SDLC practices into our CI/CD pipelines; oversee pentesting, red teaming, and threat modeling across our core infrastructure. Enable Enterprise Sales: Serve as the technical security authority in high-stakes customer procurement reviews, vendor risk assessments (DDQs), and defense customer evaluations. Oversee Security Operations: Build and manage internal incident response capabilities, continuous monitoring, vulnerability management, and employee security awareness programs. What we are looking for:

Valarian Technologies Limited is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applications from individuals regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran, amnesty, or any other legally protected characteristic.

We are committed to ensuring a fair and inclusive recruitment process and providing employment opportunities to all applicants. Decision recruitment, hiring, and employment are based solely on qualifications, skills, and experience relevant to the job requirements.

## About Valarian Technologies Limited

## Company Overview
- **One‑liner**: Valarian builds infrastructure that lets enterprises and governments run AI, agents and applications inside a hardened, governed environment where the customer — not the vendor — holds the keys.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: London, United Kingdom
- **Founded**: 2020
- **Founders**: Max Buchan (CEO) and Josh McLaughlin (COO) [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/about)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: National security, defence, regulated enterprise (finance, critical infrastructure)
- **Target customers**: Government / defence organisations and regulated enterprises that require high‑trust, high‑stakes deployment (B2B)
- **Mission / purpose**: “Building the infrastructure to regain control over your high‑consequence systems” — giving customers model independence, auditability and containment without ceding control to a third party [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)

## Products & Services
- **ACRA (Automated Compartmentalised Runtime Architecture)**: A Kubernetes‑native control architecture that extends the cluster with workload‑level governance. Each workload (model, agent, service) runs inside its own enclave with built‑in policy enforcement, default‑deny networking, short‑lived secrets, per‑workload messaging and end‑to‑end audit. ACRA is cloud‑agnostic and can run on AWS, Azure, on‑prem or air‑gapped. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: **Total Funding – $70M** (Series A of $50M led by New Enterprise Associates, bringing total to $70M) [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: New Enterprise Associates (lead), plus “leading defence and national security investors”; also backed by operators from Palantir, Darktrace and US Special Operations. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/about)
- **Growth Signals**: Deployed across multiple continents; “100s of enclaves deployed”; headcount grew ~18.5% YoY (from 19 to ~24 employees); actively hiring across engineering, compliance and security roles. [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/valarian)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Customer‑held keys**: Even Valarian cannot access customer systems after deployment — governance is enforced by the infrastructure, not by privileged access. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)
- **Model‑independent**: Customers can run any model (open‑weight or frontier) without vendor lock‑in and without the model provider training on their data. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)
- **Built by operators with real‑world experience**: The team includes backgrounds from US Special Operations, Palantir, Darktrace, secure communications and high‑assurance systems, giving them credibility in environments where failure has real consequences. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/about)
- **Air‑gap ready**: ACRA is cloud‑agnostic and can operate in disconnected, air‑gapped environments — a rare capability designed from day one for government/defence deployments. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/)

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Scaling the platform for wider enterprise and government adoption; continuing to harden ACRA as the posture layer for AI workloads; expanding the team (engineering, security, compliance) to meet demand from regulated sectors. [jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/valarian)
- **Direction for growth**: Maintain “sovereign control” positioning — enabling customers to own their inference, data and access policies regardless of cloud or infrastructure substrate.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Hybrid work setup with a London HQ (flexibility where it matters, structure where it counts). [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/careers)
- **Compensation & benefits**: Competitive compensation, equity, and employer‑enhanced pension contributions. [valarian.com](https://www.valarian.com/careers)
- **Engineering environment**: Work on deep infrastructure (Kubernetes, SPIFFE/SPIRE, Cilium, Istio, Vault, NATS, OpenTelemetry) in a high‑trust, high‑impact domain that spans government, defence and regulated enterprise. Engineers are expected to own meaningful pieces of the platform from day one.
- **Notable perks for job seekers**: Opportunity to work on a product that deals with cutting‑edge AI governance and national‑security‑grade isolation; small but growing team (24 people) where contributions are highly visible.

## Sources
1. [valarian.com – Product page](https://www.valarian.com/)
2. [valarian.com – About page](https://www.valarian.com/about)
3. [valarian.com – Careers page](https://www.valarian.com/careers)
4. [jobs.lever.co – Valarian open roles](https://jobs.lever.co/valarian)
5. [linkedin.com – Valarian company page](https://linkedin.com/company/valarian)

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