Sr. Manager, Application and Pipeline Security

Nielsen is seeking a proactive Senior Manager within the Product Security organization to drive and expand our cloud and application security initiatives. This role requires a balance of operational discipline, high-agency, and technical vision.

You will lead a group of skilled engineers and collaborate with development teams to transition our security framework toward a modern, automated, AI-driven DevSecOps model. You will be accountable for team performance, defining security policies, and ensuring compliance, while adapting departmental plans to address operational challenges. Additionally, you will provide subject matter guidance to employees and colleagues operating within policy guidelines with moderate managerial oversight.

Work Style & Mindset

• You prioritize business enablement over rigid perfectionism. You know how to make calculated risk trade-offs, focus on the 20% of risks that cause 80% of the impact, and keep engineering teams moving forward.
• You treat engineering teams as internal customers. You measure success not by how many vulnerabilities you find, but by how easily developers can fix them with minimal friction.
• You possess the grit and diplomatic skills to drive cultural change. You comfortably navigate organizational inertia and win buy-in for AI automation through small, high-impact victories.
• You stay ahead of emerging tech trends, continuously evaluating how AI, cloud-native patterns, and modern tooling can simplify security operations.
• You maintain a steady, analytical composure during high-severity events or pipeline blockers, focusing on automated prevention and root-cause solutions.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a high-performing Application Security engineering team, fostering professional development and aligning team priorities with organizational goals and operational challenges.
• Drive a forward-thinking Application and Pipeline Security strategy that transitions operations to an autonomous, AI-driven DevSecOps model, pioneering agentic security workflows for automated remediation while establishing robust architectural guardrails and validation standards for secure AI-assisted development.
• Partner collaboratively with Platform Engineering to define cloud security baselines and Policy-as-Code (PaC) guardrails.
• Oversee application penetration testing initiatives ensuring findings are triaged, fed into pipeline guardrails, and remediated within SLA.
• Establish comprehensive observability and regulatory standards across the development lifecycle, including supply chain safeguards (SBOM), automated CI/CD security gates, and risk-approval protocols to drive rapid, friction-free remediation and ensure high-confidence visibility.
• Implement structured prioritization protocols to effectively resolve existing security vulnerabilities across application environments and cloud infrastructures.
• Refine and calibrate scanning telemetry (SAST, DAST, SCA, IaC) to minimize false positives and enhance the delivery of high-confidence, actionable intelligence.
• Design automated response triggers within AWS ecosystems utilizing native orchestration tools for rapid isolation and runtime threat containment.
• Cultivate an environment where security is seamlessly embedded into native development workflows, including IDEs and CI/CD pipelines.
• Architect and report on critical performance indicators, such as Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR) and Auto-Fix Acceptance Rates, to demonstrate program efficacy.

• Minimum of 5-8 years of experience in specialized roles across Application Security or Cloud Engineering, including at least 3 years in a management or leadership capacity.
• Demonstrated proficiency in designing AWS security governance and deploying automated incident mitigation within large-scale cloud ecosystems.
• Comprehensive technical mastery of CI/CD orchestration, containerization safeguards, and the integration of SAST/DAST/SCA solutions within developer-centric workflows.
• Advanced automation capabilities with the ability to architect security tooling.
• Familiarity with emerging AI-enhanced security technologies, such as LLM-driven remediation tools and automated code-fixing platforms.
• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field like Computer Science or Cybersecurity, or equivalent professional background.
• Substantial professional history serving as a Staff or Principal Software Engineer, or DevOps Specialist, preceding a career move into security management.
• Demonstrated track record of building strong, collaborative partnerships with software engineering and platform teams without relying on dogmatic authority.
• Possession of elite certifications such as AWS Certified Security – Specialty or AWS Solutions Architect – Professional.

Core Competencies 

• Lead product security efforts, define policies, and ensure compliance across development teams.
• Manages professional associates and/or supervisors
• Is accountable for the performance and results of a team
• Adapts departmental plans and priorities to address resources and operational challenges
• Decisions are guided by policies, resources and local business operating procedures. Receives moderate guidance from manager
• Provides subject matter guidance to employees, colleagues and/or customers
• Manages professional employees (P1, P2, P3) and leads team. Adapts plans to meet resource and operational challenges.
• Integrates industry best practices in own area to the achieve of objectives
• Identifies and resolves moderately complex business problems
• Manages a generally homogeneous team; adapts plans and sets priorities to meet service and/or operational challenges
• Guides, influences and persuades others internally and/or externally
• Requires in-depth conceptual and practical knowledge in own areas and knowledge of other areas
• Impacts the level of service and the team’s ability to meet quality, volume and timeliness of objectives.
• Guided by department policies, resource requirements, budgets and the business plan
• 5-8 years with overseeing background
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience

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Holistic Rewards: We are committed to an inclusive benefits package that supports our employees and their families. This includes comprehensive health and wellness plans, a 401(k) with a Nielsen company match, and a generous paid time off policy. Depending on the role, additional benefits may include a company-provided vehicle and/or discretionary incentive/bonus eligibility.

Compensation Transparency: The posted base salary range is a reasonable estimate that  may be adjusted based on the final work location of the selected employee. Individual pay within the range is determined by factors such as experience, training, geography, certifications, and business needs. Beyond base salary, this role may be eligible for bonuses, equity, or other incentives.

Nielsen makes hiring decisions without regard to disability status, protected veteran status, or membership in any other protected class.

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