Principal Engineer - Director

Purpose of the role

To drive technical excellence and innovation by leading the design and implementation of robust software solutions, providing mentorship to engineering teams, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and contributing to strategic planning to ensure the delivery of high-quality solutions aligned with business objectives.

Accountabilities

• Provision of guidance and expertise to engineering teams to ensure alignment with best practices and foster a culture of technical excellence.
• Contribution to strategic planning by aligning technical decisions with business goals, anticipating future technology trends, and providing insights to optimize product roadmaps.
• Design and implementation of complex, scalable, and maintainable software solutions, considering long-term viability and business objectives.
• Mentoring and coaching to junior and mid-level engineers to foster professional growth and knowledge sharing, elevating the overall skillset and capabilities of the organization.
• Collaboration with business partners, product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions and ensure a cohesive approach to product development.
• Innovation within the organization by identifying and incorporating new technologies, methodologies, and industry practices into the engineering process.

Director Expectations

• To manage a business function, providing significant input to function-wide strategic initiatives. Contribute to and influence policy and procedures for the function and plan, manage, and consult on multiple complex and critical strategic projects, which may be business-wide.
• Lead a large team or sub-function, leading other people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business. For an individual contributor, lead organization-wide projects and act as a deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross-functionally. Train, guide, and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long-term profits, organizational risks, and strategic decisions.
• Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made 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 that relevant processes are in place to facilitate adherence.
• Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate.
• Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up-to-date relevant sector/functional knowledge, and insight into external market developments/initiatives.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/sensitive situations.
• Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or 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.
• Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.

Skills

• Expert-level proficiency in modern Java (Java 17+), Spring Boot, and Spring Cloud within large-scale, mission-critical banking environments
• Proven experience designing and operating high-volume corporate banking platforms (payments, cash management, trade finance, liquidity, treasury)
• Strong command of distributed systems, event-driven architectures, APIs, data consistency, and streaming technologies (e.g. Kafka)
• Demonstrated leadership in enterprise and solution architecture, including microservices, cloud-native design, and legacy modernisation
• Ability to make and defend complex architectural trade-offs balancing performance, resilience, speed, risk, and regulatory compliance
• Deep understanding of security, risk, and regulatory controls, with security embedded across design, development, and deployment

Benefits

The minimum and maximum salary/rate information above includes only base salary or base hourly rate. It does not include any additional type of compensation or benefits that may be available. Barclays employees are eligible for a suite of a competitive and generous employee benefits, including medical, dental and vision coverage, 401(k), life insurance, and other paid leave for qualifying circumstances. This position is eligible for an incentive award.