S

Starling Bank

Mobile banking for personal and business

Information Security Operations Lead

Full-TimeUpdated on 10/23/2026
No salary listed
Senior
Bachelor's
Sydney NSW, Australia
HybridHybrid role; preference for a commutable distance from the Sydney workplace.
CybersecuritySecurity Operations & Incident Response

About the job

Requirements
  • At least 5 years of experience in an in-house Security Operations Center role and team, including cyber incident response and digital forensics.
  • Experience in a similar role leading, developing, and motivating a team of subject matter experts and other managers in Information and Cyber Security.
  • Understanding of Amazon Web Services security solutions or other public cloud solutions.
  • Analysis and incident response experience with cloud systems, including Google Cloud Platform or Amazon Web Services.
  • Experience working with and supporting analytics and security information and event management platforms.
  • Experience supporting and conducting incident response engagements.
  • Experience in endpoint-based investigations.
  • Experience in cloud-based investigations.
  • Experience with incident command and conducting tabletop exercises.
  • Experience acting as both commander and subject matter expert during incidents and investigations.
  • Ability to lead, inspire, and drive change through an organisation.
  • Ability to communicate technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences, verbally and in writing.
  • Teamwork and collaboration skills as part of a multifunctional team.
  • Time management, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills.
  • Willingness to share knowledge with the team and mentor colleagues.
  • A high-level understanding of mobile, network, and operating system security controls.
  • Successful candidates must pass background checks, including employment references, fraud checks, financial probity, social media, and criminal history.
Responsibilities
  • Lead a team of subject matter experts and analysts to ensure Information Security is managed and continuously improved in line with bank policy and procedure.
  • Support the development and progression of the Information Security Analyst team from technical and professional perspectives.
  • Triage, respond to, and investigate alerts from cloud infrastructure and security, endpoint detection and response, and perimeter detection tooling.
  • Conduct quality assurance for triage case handling, mitigation actions, and shift handovers; collate lessons learned and implement improvements where required.
  • Interpret logs from cloud, endpoint, network, and other sources to identify root causes and determine containment, eradication, and recovery steps during incident response.
  • Work with other organisational teams to analyse, contain, eradicate, and recover from cyber security incidents.
  • Continuously develop and maintain incident handling, response, and readiness processes.
  • Support the wider Security Operations team with detection engineering by creating and optimising analytic triggers, and conduct threat hunting based on threat intelligence.
  • Document incidents and investigations, including analysis findings, containment steps, and root causes.
  • Plan and participate in tabletop exercises.
  • Present investigation findings to technical and non-technical audiences.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience in forensics involving cloud systems such as Google Cloud Platform or Amazon Web Services, endpoints or servers running Windows, macOS, or Linux, and/or networks.
  • Experience programming in Python, Go, and/or Java.
  • A cyber/information security-related degree and/or relevant cyber security qualifications; these are desired but not required.
  • Understanding of malware analysis techniques.

About the company

Starling Bank is a digital bank in the UK offering personal and business current accounts through a mobile app. For individuals, it provides features like instant spending notifications, insights, and Spaces (pots) to separate money. For businesses, it offers business accounts with invoicing and accounting integrations. The app handles account management, payments, and budgeting in one place, with transactions processed online and via card payments. The bank earns revenue from card interchange fees, interest on balances held with the central bank, and lending (such as personal loans and overdrafts). Its approach combines mobile-first banking with a broad set of services in a single app, differentiating itself through the Spaces budgeting tool, real-time transaction insights, and a strong focus on both personal and business banking. Starling’s goal is to grow its customer base while expanding its lending portfolio and offering a complete digital banking experience in the UK.

Company Size

1,001-5,000

Company Stage

Private

Total Funding

$1.3B

Headquarters

London, United Kingdom

Founded

2014

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • May 2026 results showed fifth straight profit year, with £217.1 million pre-tax profit.
  • August 2026 launches added student accounts, smart tools, and business AI assistant features.
  • iwoca's September 2026 £1 million SME loans embed Starling deeper into business banking workflows.

What critics are saying

  • FCA fined Starling £28.96 million in 2024 for sanctions-screening failures and high-risk accounts.
  • July 2026 cuts eliminated 130 jobs after revenue fell 6% to £887 million.
  • Engine dependence and rising AI automation expose Starling to execution failures and culture damage.

What makes Starling Bank unique

  • Starling's app-first UK bank pairs 6.2 million platform accounts with AI-driven money management.
  • Engine by Starling hit £70 million annual recurring revenue and won Scotiabank's Tangerine.
  • Starling bundles banking, accounting, travel eSIMs, and embedded SME lending inside one app.

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Benefits

  • Health Insurance
  • Life Insurance
  • Unlimited Paid Time Off
  • Paid Vacation
  • Paid Sick Leave
  • Paid Holidays
  • Hybrid Work Options
  • 401(k) Retirement Plan
  • 401(k) Company Match
  • Mental Health Support
  • Wellness Program
  • Family Planning Benefits

Growth & Insights and Company News

6 month growth

0%

1 year growth

2%

2 year growth

2%
Inkl
Oct 21st, 2026
Starling Bank valued at $2.2B as founder Anne Boden sells final 2.7% stake for about $57M

Starling Bank has been valued at about £1.7 billion after founder Anne Boden sold her remaining shares in the digital lender, Sky News reported. Boden's final 2.7% holding is estimated to have raised about £45 million, in line with the implied valuation. The exact amount she received has not been independently confirmed.

Business Matters
Oct 21st, 2026
Starling founder Anne Boden sells final stake at £1.7bn valuation.

Starling founder Anne Boden sells final stake at £1.7bn valuation. Anne Boden, the founder of Starling, has sold her remaining 2.7 per cent stake in the digital bank at a valuation of £1.7bn, according to Sky News. Sky News reported today that the sale would have raised roughly £45m. The valuation is less than half the £4bn that Starling was reported to be seeking last year in a secondary share sale designed to let some existing shareholders reduce their holdings. The Sunday Times reported at the weekend that Boden had sold the shares, without giving a valuation. According to the newspaper, the buyers were existing shareholders, among them Starling's largest investor, Harald McPike. Free newsletters The stories that matter to UK business, straight to your inbox. A Starling spokesperson told City AM: "Our founder has sold her remaining shares in Starling privately to several existing shareholders. This has been done with the company's full knowledge and we wish her every success with her new venture." When contacted by Sky News, Boden said she was unable to comment, and Starling declined to comment. Sky News said the price at which the stake was sold was likely to alarm other investors. Boden launched Starling in 2014 after senior roles at Allied Irish Banks and Lloyds. She announced in May 2023 that she would step down as chief executive, saying at the time that it was "not really appropriate" for the bank to have a shareholder as its chief executive. She owned 4.9 per cent of the company when she announced her departure. City AM has reported that her exit followed a clash with investors over fund manager Jupiter's decision to sell its Starling stake at a price below the bank's previous valuation. In February, filings showed that Boden had cut her holding to around 2.7 per cent from 4.3 per cent during the secondary sale process. Business Matters reported at the time that McPike held more than 40 per cent of Starling through his investment vehicle JTC Holdings, and that the Guernsey-based investment trust Chrysalis Investments retained a stake of more than 10 per cent. The sale follows a year of lower earnings at the bank. In its results for the 12 months to 31 March 2026, Starling reported pre-tax profit of £217.1m, down from £223.4m a year earlier, and revenue of £887.4m, down from £940m. According to City AM, Starling cited the Bank of England's falling base rate as the main headwind. Rates fell by an average of 91 basis points over the year, and interest income dropped by £52.5m to £759.2m, City AM reported. The group also invested £19.7m in Engine, its software-as-a-service arm, which sells Starling's banking technology to other lenders, according to the results statement. Declan Ferguson, Starling's group chief financial officer, said in the results: "Our business delivered sustained earnings against a backdrop of softening rates and certain regulatory restrictions that moderated our ability to grow our UK customer base during the financial year." Starling said 56 per cent of its SME customers use it as their primary bank account, and that SME account openings in April were more than triple the level of a year earlier. Sky News said Starling employs thousands of people and was a major participant in the government-backed loan schemes introduced during the pandemic. The bank has long been touted as a potential listing candidate, although Sky News said there was little evidence that it wanted to pursue a flotation in the near term. Boden is now working on a new artificial intelligence venture. According to City AM, she began recruiting software engineers last month for a project called Moonshot, seeking candidates with a background in banking technology.

FF News
Oct 20th, 2026
Starling Bank unveils AI agent capable of 17-second Financial Crime investigations.

Starling Bank unveils AI agent capable of 17-second Financial Crime investigations. Quick summary. Starling Bank has launched an Agentic Financial Crime Investigator that completes end-to-end fraud assessments in just 17 seconds. By embedding the AI natively within its core banking engine, Starling leverages real-time telemetry and historical data to eliminate integration lag and significantly accelerate financial crime detection. How does Starling's AI speed up Financial Crime investigations? Starling Bank solves the problem of slow, manual fraud reviews by deploying an Agentic Financial Crime Investigator. Traditional investigations often rely on disparate systems that require manual data gathering, but this new agent automates the entire workflow. It delivers a comprehensive estimate and risk assessment within 17 seconds of an alert, allowing the bank to respond to potential threats almost instantly. * 17-second response time from initial alert to investigation conclusion. * Native core integration ensures zero latency between the transaction and the analysis. * End-to-end automation of the investigative lifecycle. What are the benefits of a Native core banking AI? By building the Agentic Financial Crime Investigator directly into its proprietary core banking engine, Starling maintains absolute control over its data and models. This approach bypasses the "frustration of change requests" and high costs often associated with external vendors. The agent has unfettered access to historical behavior patterns and real-time telemetry, which are critical for identifying sophisticated fraud that external tools might miss due to data silos. How does this impact Starling's operational efficiency? The move toward agentic financial crime tools represents a shift away from external development constraints. Starling no longer faces the ongoing external costs or integration hurdles of third-party software. Instead, the bank can iterate on its financial crime detection models internally, ensuring that its security measures evolve as quickly as the tactics used by bad actors. Ff news take: Starling Bank continues to prove why owning your tech stack is a massive competitive advantage. While most banks struggle with the 'lag of external integration,' Starling is deploying financial crime detection at a speed that is practically impossible for legacy institutions. This 17-second benchmark sets a new industry standard for agentic financial crime response, effectively moving the needle from reactive monitoring to near-instant mitigation.

Financing Your Way
Oct 20th, 2026
Starling build agentic fincrime investigator that takes 17 seconds.

Starling build agentic fincrime investigator that takes 17 seconds. Starling Bank launches an AI fraud investigator that completes complex security checks in seconds, promising faster and safer consumer financing. Curated by Financing Your Way from original reporting by Finextra - Lending. Summary is AI-assisted and editorially reviewed - see its editorial standards. Starling Bank has introduced an AI-driven 'financial crime investigator' that slashes investigation times to just 17 seconds. For retailers and service providers, this signals a massive shift in how consumer financing applications are processed and protected. Traditional fraud checks often cause friction, leading to manual reviews and delayed approvals. This technology uses 'agentic AI' to act like a human investigator, analyzing complex data patterns instantly to root out bad actors without slowing down legitimate customers. What this means for your business is a future with less 'false positive' rejections. When an automated system flags a customer, it often results in a lost sale. By using advanced AI to verify identities and scan for financial crime in seconds, lenders can offer smoother checkouts while keeping default rates low. This tech helps bridge the gap between high security and the instant gratification customers expect from modern financing. While currently a tool for internal bank operations, expect this type of rapid verification to become the standard across BNPL and consumer loan platforms soon. It protects your revenue by ensuring that credit is extended to real, qualified buyers while blocking fraud before it hits your books. Who else is covering this

FinTech Wales
Oct 15th, 2026
Starling claims UK first with AI banking model trained on uk-owned cloud.

Starling claims UK first with AI banking model trained on uk-owned cloud. 15 October, 2026 * AI * News * Uncategorized Founded by Welsh entrepreneur Anne Boden and with an office in Cardiff, Starling is developing a new artificial intelligence model with support from NVIDIA and UK cloud provider Civo. The bank says its Transactional Foundation Model will be the first banking model of its kind trained and hosted on UK cloud infrastructure owned by a UK-owned and headquartered company, with all data remaining within UK jurisdiction. The model will be trained on more than 15 billion anonymised transactions from Starling's proprietary data. It will underpin a new intelligence layer, called 'Starling Intelligence', designed to support the bank's AI capabilities and enable more personalised services for customers. Connecting Starling's AI capabilities. Welsh technology leader Harriet Rees, Group CIO at Starling and a UK Government AI Champion for Financial Services, said: "We've made huge strides with our proprietary AI tools, launching the UK's first agentic AI financial assistant and rolling out new features every week. Now we want to connect these tools with a single intelligence layer that's trained entirely on the specific needs of our customers." "We also want to take a leadership role in the development of home-grown cloud infrastructure, which is essential to European companies' ability to diversify their suppliers and reduce concentration risk." The project follows recommendations in the UK Government's Financial Services AI Adoption Plan, co-authored by Harriet Rees and published in July 2026. The plan highlights the financial sector's reliance on a small number of global AI and cloud providers. It recommends that government and industry broaden their partnerships to increase choice and strengthen resilience. Supporting UK cloud infrastructure. Starling will develop the model with NVIDIA's financial services team, using NVIDIA's Transaction Foundation Model developer blueprint and tools for data processing and model training. The model will be trained and hosted on Civo's UK cloud infrastructure. Mark Boost, CEO of Civo, said: "AI will only deliver lasting value for the UK economy if it's built on secure, resilient, sovereign infrastructure." "Starling is leading the financial sector by training and hosting its Transactional Foundation Model on a homegrown cloud. Pairing NVIDIA compute with Civo's UK sovereign cloud shows that banks don't have to trade performance or innovation for control of their data, or depend on a handful of global providers." Aser Blanco, Global Head of Banking at NVIDIA, said: "Banks are at the forefront of turning massive amounts of data into timely, personalised insights while also protecting customers from fraud." "By combining NVIDIA's accelerated computing and software for data processing and model training with Civo's UK sovereign cloud, Starling can deliver exceptional customer experiences while maintaining control of its customers' data." Planned launch in early 2027. Starling intends to put the model into production in early 2027, initially to improve its existing AI services around fraud detection. It will then enhance Starling Assistant, which the bank describes as the UK's first agentic AI financial assistant. The Starling Intelligence layer is intended to enable more personalised experiences, including proactively offering budgeting guidance tailored to individual customers.