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 resou…