Software Assurance & Governance Consultant (Contract)

Start Date: ASAP
Location: Brimpton, Berkshire (Onsite)
IR35: Outside
Rate: £550pd
Duration: 1 Week Initial Engagement

The Candidate:
Our client is seeking an experienced, independent specialist to carry out a one-week review of their software development and release pipeline. The purpose is to provide objective assurance that their controls for protecting confidential data — particularly the separation of data between different customers of a multi-tenant application — are operating effectively and reflect current good practice. The reviewer must be genuinely independent: with no prior involvement in the systems under review and no ongoing relationship with the delivery team.

Key Responsibilities:

• Assess the end-to-end pipeline: test planning, code review, automated testing in CI/CD, and release sign-off gates.
• Verify hands-on that automated controls work as intended — including automated / AI-assisted code review and automated regression tests — rather than reviewing documentation alone. This includes confirming that the test suite detects a deliberately re-introduced fault.
• Judge whether controls are genuinely effective or have become nominal through familiarity, and identify gaps a fresh outside perspective would surface.
• Report prioritised findings and recommendations to senior stakeholders.

Essential Skills & Experience:

• Secure software development background, with the ability to read a code diff and reason about the security consequences of changes — including the silent removal of access-control or permission logic.
• Strong SQL Server / T-SQL and experience with database unit-testing frameworks (e.g. tSQLt), sufficient to run or witness a fault-injection test.
• Understanding of multi-tenant / customer data-segregation architecture and its failure modes.
• Experience assessing CI/CD pipelines, release gating, and DevOps work-item traceability.
• Understanding of Claude AI within development workflows.
• A track record of independent process or control-effectiveness assurance reviews and clear reporting to senior audiences.

Desirable:

• Financial services or other regulated, data-sensitive sector experience. A recognised assurance or security credential (e.g. CISA, CISSP, CREST) or equivalent demonstrable experience.
• Implementation of ISO standards.

Deliverables:

• A written report with prioritised findings and recommendations, critical items clearly distinguished.
• Explicit confirmation of the outcome of the hands-on verification of the automated controls.

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Job Reference: RL8219