Lead Platform Engineer

About the Role

To design, develop and improve software, utilising various engineering methodologies, that provides business, platform, and technology capabilities for our customers and colleagues. This role involves building and leading the global Front-Office (FO) engineering success function, serving as the voice of FO users, and driving engineering solutions that reduce friction and accelerate delivery.

Responsibilities

• Global Front-Office Success Engineering Leadership
  • Build and lead the global FO engineering success function across New York, London, and APAC users.
  • Build trusted relationships with Quants and Strats worldwide, understanding differing desk-specific needs.
  • Prioritize and manage work intake globally based on business impact and urgency.
  • Serve as the voice of FO users to influence platform roadmap and feature prioritization.
• Hands-On Engineering & Troubleshooting
  • Write high-quality Python code for automation, integrations, internal utilities, and FO tooling.
  • Diagnose complex issues across cloud (AWS), distributed systems, Python stacks, notebooks, model pipelines, and APIs.
  • Deliver engineering solutions that reduce recurring FO friction and accelerate delivery.
• AWS Engineering Support
  • Guide global front-office teams on secure and scalable usage of AWS services such as: S3, IAM, Lambda, ECS/EKS, Step Functions, CloudWatch, Glue, and CDK/CloudFormation.
  • Provide hands-on help with debugging, deployment, permissions, networking, and performance.
• AI/ML Enablement
  • Help global FO teams onboard onto platform AI features such as inference gateways, embeddings, evaluation tools, and tracing.
  • Provide guidance on AI/ML concepts: model inference, RAG, embeddings, vector stores, latency optimization, guardrails.
  • Support adoption of tools such as LiteLLM, MLflow, Langfuse, Mem0, Databricks, SageMaker, and Observe.
• Developer Experience & Operational Excellence
  • Establish global support processes, workflows, and standards.
  • Identify patterns in recurring issues and partner with platform engineering to eliminate them via features or automation.
  • Develop and maintain documentation, onboarding guides, and best practices tailored for FO developers.
  • Drive proactive monitoring of systems impacting FO teams.
• Leadership & Mentorship
  • Lead and mentor a small team of engineers focused on FO success.
  • Set strong engineering standards for code quality, reliability, and FO responsiveness.
  • Promote a culture of collaboration, empathy, accountability, and excellence.
• Governance & Risk Management
  • Ensure all FO support and deployment workflows comply with governance, model controls, and data privacy requirements.
  • Promote secure-by-default patterns across global FO usage.
  • Help enforce model governance standards and audit requirements.
• Development & Delivery
  • Development and delivery of high-quality software solutions using industry-aligned programming languages, frameworks, and tools.
  • Ensure code is scalable, maintainable, and optimized for performance.
  • Cross-functional collaboration with product managers, designers, and other engineers to define software requirements and devise solution strategies.
  • Participate in code reviews and promote a culture of code quality and knowledge sharing.
• Innovation & Compliance
  • Stay informed of industry technology trends and innovations and contribute to the organization’s technology communities.
  • Adhere to secure coding practices to mitigate vulnerabilities and protect sensitive data.
  • Implement effective unit testing practices to ensure proper code design, readability, and reliability.

Director Expectations

• Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions outside of own function, offering significant input to function-wide strategic initiatives.
• Manage, coordinate, and enable resourcing, budgeting, and policy creation for a significant sub-function.
• Escalate breaches of policies/procedures appropriately.
• Foster and guide compliance, ensuring regulations are observed and relevant processes are in place to facilitate adherence.
• Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays when appropriate.
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division/Group to achieve overall business objectives.
• Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up-to-date relevant sector/functional knowledge.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in complex/sensitive situations.
• Exercise management authority to make significant decisions or strategic recommendations within own area.
• Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.
• Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/business divisions.
• Serve as a mandated spokesperson for the function and business division.
• Demonstrate the LEAD leadership behaviors: Listen and be authentic, Energize and inspire, Align across the enterprise, Develop others.
• Demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence, and Stewardship.
• Demonstrate the Barclays Mindset: Empower, Challenge, and Drive.

Requirements

• Strong Python engineering experience (backend, tooling, automation, debugging).
• Hands-on expertise with AWS: IAM, S3, Lambda, ECS/EKS, Step Functions, CloudWatch.
• Proven experience working with Quants, Strats, or front-office engineering teams.
• Solid understanding of AI/ML concepts (inference, vector search, embeddings, RAG, evaluation).
• Strong debugging abilities across cloud infrastructure, Python environments, containers, and pipelines.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills in high-pressure FO environments.
• Experience leading a technical team or owning a global-facing engineering function.

Desirable Skills

• Familiarity with tools such as LiteLLM, MLflow, Databricks, SageMaker, Langfuse, Observe, Mem0.
• Understanding of financial markets, derivatives, FO analytics workflows, or pricing/risk models.
• Exposure to model governance, compliance, and data control frameworks.
• Experience with Docker, ECS/EKS, and platform observability tooling.
• Experience improving developer productivity or reliability at scale.

Pay

The base salary range for this role is $220,000 to $300,000. This range does not include any other type of compensation or benefits that may be available.