Staff Systems Engineer, Patching and Vulnerability remediation lead

The patch and vulnerability management are an ongoing, regular operations process of identifying, assessing, managing, remediating operating systems cyber vulnerabilities. The Patch & Vulnerability Management SME provides technical leadership in overseeing and managing the patch management process to protect Mission Critical Systems and Services to avoid unforeseen disruptions. This role will be primarily responsible for ensuring that all software and systems are up to date with the latest patches and hotfixes, minimizing security vulnerabilities, and maintaining optimal system performance. He/she will lead and manage a team of outsourced engineers to manage the end-to-end patch management activities. The role also requires close collaboration with various teams to develop and implement effective patch management strategies and ensures compliance with industry standards and best practices. The ideal candidate is expected to provide complex patch management program leadership within the enterprise. This position is responsible for overseeing the effective IT operations following company risk management frameworks and ensure alignment with the organization s rapid growth and increasing regulatory requirements.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Provide domain and subject matter expertise in vulnerability, patch management and configuration management

• Design, develop, review, and maintain a comprehensive patch management strategy and configuration management and practice for the overall IT operations environment, considering security, operational, and business requirements.

• Conduct regular patch management, vulnerability assessments and configuration management to identify potential security risks and prioritize patching based on criticality, urgency, and impact. Such assessment should cover all layers of enterprise infrastructure, endpoints, server hardware, operating systems, and applications.

• Collaborate with the security team to evaluate the risk associated with unpatched vulnerabilities and recommend appropriate mitigation strategies.

• Closely collaborate with Security, Infrastructure service owners and other teams to review guidelines, policies, and procedures for patch management activities and ensure adherence across the organization.

• Review and coordinate the deployment of patches, updates, and security fixes across all systems, applications, and infrastructure.

• Establish and/or enhance a standardized thorough testing process to verify the compatibility and stability of patches before deployment to production environments.

• Work closely with infrastructure, application, security, and BU IT teams to schedule and implement patching activities with minimal impact on business operations.

• Prepare detailed reports, metrics, and insights on patch compliance, analyse vulnerability remediation progress, and system performance to management and stakeholders. Regularly communicate the progress of patch management initiatives to senior leadership.

• Analyze threats, vulnerability feeds, patch management gaps and propose continuous improvement / remediation plans.

• Demonstrating system health and patching / vulnerability remediation compliance status based on predefined standards and routine maintenance of patch management.

• Provide support during incident response efforts related to vulnerabilities or issues arising from patching activities.

• Investigate and troubleshoot patch-related problems, collaborating with relevant teams to identify root causes and implement corrective actions.

• Work within the change management and service management processes within Technology teams for all patch management coordination and execution.

• Support the production of change risk assessments planned by Technology teams performing patch management and be able to present the changes to Change Advisory Boards, both internal and external.

• Support technical evaluation and evidence for security assessments and audits.

• Staying updated on new developments, emerging threats and vulnerabilities in cybersecurity standards, best practices and technologies related to patch management.

To be successful in this role you have:

Experience in leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into work processes, decision-making, or problem-solving. This may include using AI-powered tools, automati