In today’s FinTech world, compliance is currency, and nowhere is that truer than in cybersecurity and IT risk. As regulatory scrutiny tightens across the UK, US and Europe, the difference between a clean audit and a damaging red flag may come down to just one thing: your next FinTech hire.
The right person can strengthen your risk posture, harden your defences and ensure your board sleeps soundly before the next FCA or SEC review. The wrong one? They might be the reason you’re explaining data exposure to investors or regulators six months from now.
At Harrington Starr, we’ve seen how strategic cyber recruitment directly impacts audit outcomes, from SOC2 compliance in New York to ISO27001 readiness in London, to GDPR-driven hires in Belfast. But here’s the problem: most FinTechs wait too long to act, or trust too easily when the CVs start rolling in.
Why Audit Risk is Now a Hiring Problem
Audit requirements are no longer purely operational checklists; they are assessments of your resilience, your governance, and your culture. Increasingly, auditors want to see:
- Evidence of up-to-date security frameworks (NIST, CIS, ISO27001)
- Role-based access and segregation of duties
- Incident response plans led by qualified personnel
- Formalised risk assessments and control ownership
That means every person you hire into your cyber or IT risk team isn’t just filling a seat. They’re part of your audit defence.
A missed patching window. An overprovisioned IAM role. A lack of third-party vendor assessments. These aren’t hypothetical issues, they’re exactly the gaps auditors are zeroing in on. And they are often caused not by bad systems, but by under-skilled or overwhelmed people.
The Cyber Security Hiring Gap That’s Exposing FinTech Firms
Right now, the FinTech industry is under hiring in cyber and IT risk. That’s not because the roles don’t exist, but because many firms are struggling to:
- Compete for top talent in New York and London
- Understand the difference between IT operations and IT risk
- Source candidates with the right mix of regulatory awareness, security skills and sector understanding
In the last year alone, we’ve helped high-growth FinTechs recruit:
- Contract GRC specialists to prepare for SOC2 audits
- Permanent security engineers to build detection pipelines
- IT risk analysts who can communicate effectively with regulators
In each case, the right hire changed the audit outcome.
Permanent vs. Contract? It Depends on the Stakes
One of the most common questions we get is: "Should we hire permanently or bring in a contractor?"
Contract talent is ideal when:
- You need urgent expertise ahead of a known deadline (e.g., a Q3 audit)
- You lack internal bandwidth to handle remediation
- You’re not yet clear on the long-term team structure
Permanent hires make sense when:
- Cyber risk is a board-level concern and needs internal champions
- You're building security into your development lifecycle (DevSecOps)
- You want stability and institutional knowledge across audit cycles
At Harrington Starr, we support both routes, but we guide clients based on audit pressure, business maturity, and budget. Sometimes, getting a SOC2 specialist in tomorrow is worth more than a six-month perm search.
Regional Talent Insights for Cybersecurity and IT Risk Employees: London, New York and Belfast
Each market has its own nuances:
New York:
- Heavy regulatory pressure from the SEC and NYDFS
- High competition for cyber leaders with FinTech credentials
- Contract rates rising as firms prepare for audit and funding rounds
London:
- Intense focus on ISO27001 and GDPR
- Increasing demand for IT risk professionals with FCA experience
- A competitive perm market, but stronger access to international talent
Belfast:
- Emerging cyber hub with deep technical talent
- Attractive cost base for scaling FinTechs
- Strong university pipeline but competition from global tech firms
If you're not recruiting with these dynamics in mind, you're at risk of falling behind.
The Cost of Getting Cyber Security Hiring Wrong in FinTech
Let’s be blunt:
- A failed audit can delay funding, ruin partnerships, and trigger fines.
- A breach caused by a misconfigured system or an overlooked control can cause reputational damage beyond recovery.
And yet, we still see FinTechs rolling the dice on security hiring. Generalist recruiters. Over-reliance on internal HR teams. Last-minute panic hiring before audits.
You need a partner who understands both technical nuance and regulatory pressure.
How to Identify Audit-Ready Cyber Security Candidates for FinTech
One of the most overlooked aspects of hiring in cyber security and IT risk is assessing how well a candidate will stand up under audit pressure. It’s not enough to know frameworks or tick boxes, they need to demonstrate a proactive, ownership-driven mindset around governance and risk.
When interviewing, ask:
- Can they explain audit trails and control ownership in past roles?
- Have they ever faced an audit themselves, and what role did they play?
- Do they know the difference between “policy” and “evidence”?
The best candidates won’t just answer, they’ll offer improvements. They’ll point out gaps in documentation, recommend better control mapping, and articulate how security aligns with business continuity and regulatory expectations.
At Harrington Starr, our screening process goes far beyond technical CVs. We assess real-world audit experience, stakeholder communication, and the ability to lead or support structured security initiatives.
Because in FinTech, cybersecurity is no longer just a back-office function. It’s a boardroom concern, a reputational battleground and a strategic differentiator.
Hiring someone who understands that? That’s not optional. That’s survival.
What FinTech Hiring Managers Get Wrong About Cyber Security Recruitment
We regularly speak to hiring managers who approach cyber recruitment with the best intentions, but flawed assumptions. Often, these include:
- Believing technical certifications alone indicate audit-readiness
- Prioritising short-term availability over long-term impact
- Underestimating the difference between cyber ops and IT risk
- Expecting generic recruiters to deliver niche, regulatory-aligned talent
The result? Mismatched hires, repeat recruitment cycles, and increased audit pressure.
Cyber hiring for FinTech is different. The ideal candidate understands threat modelling and data governance. They can write policies and liaise with regulators. They need to be part engineer, part advisor, part risk manager. That’s a rare mix, and finding it takes more than a LinkedIn search.
That’s why Harrington Starr works as a true partner, not a CV vendor. We help you avoid costly mis-hires by aligning your job brief to the real needs of audit, compliance and future resilience.
Checklist: Hiring a Cyber Security Specialist Ahead of an Audit
Looking to hire before your next SOC2, ISO27001, or GDPR audit? Use this quick checklist to set yourself up for success:
- Define the Audit Scope: Know whether you need generalist support or deep specialism.
- Align the JD to Regulatory Requirements: Include framework familiarity (e.g. NIST, CIS) in your criteria.
- Assess Communication Skills: Your hire must work across teams and explain risk to non-tech stakeholders.
- Request Real-World Audit Experience: Look for people who have owned or supported successful audits.
- Consider Onboarding Time: Particularly for contract roles, ensure there’s enough ramp-up time pre-audit.
- Engage a Specialist FinTech Recruiter: Save time and reduce risk by partnering with an agency that knows FinTech.
At Harrington Starr, we’ve refined this checklist over hundreds of hires. We know what good looks like and what auditors will be looking for.
5 Traits of Audit-Ready Cyber Security Talent
When hiring for cyber and IT risk roles in FinTech, technical ability is just the baseline. To pass audits and strengthen your compliance posture, you need candidates with very specific qualities. Here are the five traits we recommend prioritising:
1. Proven Audit Experience
Look for candidates who have actively participated in SOC2, ISO27001, or other formal audits. They should be able to describe their role in preparing evidence, responding to auditor questions and implementing remediations.
2. Regulatory Literacy
Your ideal hire won’t just know security best practices, they’ll understand frameworks like NIST, CIS, GDPR and the FCA Handbook. Regulatory literacy ensures their decisions align with external expectations.
3. Business Communication Skills
Audit-ready talent must translate technical issues into business impact. Can they explain risk to the board? Can they justify controls to non-technical stakeholders? That’s just as important as configuring a firewall.
4. Proactive Risk Ownership
You want professionals who don’t wait for risk to be escalated; they flag it, quantify it and address it. They ask questions like: “Where are our biggest gaps?” and “What can we automate or improve?”
5. Documentation Discipline
Good documentation is audit gold. Candidates who’ve created or maintained up-to-date risk registers, incident response plans, or security policies can save your organisation hours of stress come audit season.
If your FinTech recruitment partner isn’t screening for these traits, you’re not just hiring, you’re gambling.
Why FinTech Startups Can’t Afford to Get Cyber Hiring Wrong
For startups and scale-ups in FinTech, cybersecurity isn’t a future concern, it’s a now problem. Whether you’re pursuing a funding round, onboarding a major client, or building a SaaS platform in a regulated space, your security posture is being judged, internally and externally.
The challenge? Most early-stage FinTechs can’t afford a full-time CISO. But that doesn’t mean they can’t hire smart. A well-placed cyber contractor or fractional CISO can:
- Fast-track compliance requirements
- Shape your incident response and recovery plans
- Ensure development teams don’t ship risk with every release
We work with FinTechs at every stage of maturity to design right-sized hiring plans. We know how to find adaptable talent who can build from scratch, not just maintain legacy systems. And we understand how to speak the language of founders, not just regulators.
Because if your product is built without risk controls in mind, your audit is already failing; you just haven’t had it yet.
Contact Harrington Starr for help with your Cybersecurity and IT Risk Hiring Needs
If you’re:
- Preparing for an audit in the next 6–12 months
- Scaling your cyber or IT risk function
- Concerned about the quality of your current team or candidates
Then the time to act is now.
At Harrington Starr, we:
- Deliver vetted, interview-ready candidates in under 48 hours
- Understand the FinTech audit landscape inside-out
- Offer both contract and perm solutions from offices in New York, London and Belfast
Let’s make sure your next audit is a non-event.
Because in FinTech, compliance isn’t optional.
And your next cyber hire could be the one that saves the business.
Contact the Cybersecurity and IT Risk Team
Andrew.Nitek@harringtonstarr.com
020 3587 7007
We specialise in Cyber Security and IT Risk recruitment for the FinTech sector, placing talent that not only understands technology, but the regulatory and audit requirements that come with it.
Whether you need a contract GRC expert to bridge an audit gap, or a permanent hire to embed security into your business strategy, we move fast and deliver with accuracy.
With over a decade of experience, we know the difference between a CV that looks good on paper and a candidate who can stand up to a regulator’s questions. We’re embedded in the cyber talent market across London, New York and Belfast, with access to specialists you won’t find on job boards.
Let’s take the stress out of your next hire. Partner with Harrington Starr and secure the people who will protect your platforms, reassure your board and future-proof your business.
