Engineering Lead

JOB TITLE: Engineering Lead

LOCATION(S): The role is based in London with some travel to our other location, Bristol as the platform is spread across both hubs and a handful of locations in India.  

HOURS: Full-time

WORKING PATTERN: We work flexibly and operate a hybrid working pattern. You should expect to be in office at least two days per week with home-working available for the remaining days. 

About this opportunity

The Customer Data Services (CDS) platform operates within the CIO Enabling Services and our purpose is to ‘Enable the Bank to gain value from data by providing safe and efficient Group-wide data capabilities and services’. We work closely in partnership with our colleagues in the Chief Data & Analytics Office (CDAO). 

The CDS Platform is responsible for maintaining, transforming and innovating the infrastructure and software required to ensure that our customer data, API platforms and technological capabilities meet the bank's needs now and in the future. 

Our core technologies are: 

• Mainframe using COBOL 

• API platform using Java 

• Commercial customer management database using Java 

We maintain and develop a couple of database systems; DB2, IBM MDM and Oracle and various tooling for middleware management 

Our target is to start with a cloud first (private and public) approach in our hosting strategy and to transform our systems from a monolith to a microservice based system whilst decommissioning our legacy services and systems. For data and analytics our public cloud target is Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and the Lab’s scope includes building a customer system of engagement out there. 

The Lab at its core delivers scaled integration events of large scale acquisitions / divestments, e.g. with our colleagues in Insurance & Wealth; changes to the Customer master architecture to support change within value streams to integrate into our Customer Architecture e.g. APIs into the architecture or mainframe data structure within the OCIS database across all divisions within the Group and, modernising our technology and associated delivery methods through upgrades or movement to private and public cloud. 

Your role as the Engineering Lead is to be a visionary leader who works collaboratively with the Product Owner and the other lab roles to create an organisation that is truly data driven and providing the best value propositions to our customers.

Key Responsibilities 

Delivery of Value: 

• A visionary leader who works with the Product Owner, Chapter Leads, Architects and data content teams to build an inspiring data content services engineering strategy that provides inspiration and purpose. 

• Responsible for creating amazing data content capabilities for our customers using technical expertise to deliver change through modern engineering tools and methods and by inspiring teams to embrace agile principles, encourage innovation, and foster a “Fail Fast, Learn Faster” approach. 

• An inspiring communicator who can work with all levels of the organisation, energising teams and ensuring communication is flowing affectively. 

• Work with the Chapter Leads and the wider Engineering Community to ensure that platforms and software are built consistently with relevant patterns and practices, ensuring a collaborative environment to share ideas and work through complex problems. 

Compliance and Governance: 

• Accountable for ensuring that all Engineering work in the Lab is carried out in line with the Bank standards including all decision making. 

• Accountable for maximising the safe delegation of authority and empowerment to Lab Chapters in line with the above and in line with the core principle of Transformation

Creating and Protecting the Culture: 

• Look out and hire new talent with a focus on building amazing teams with a collaborative and inclusive culture where teams are empowered to test and learn. 

• Able to nurture teams, support them through a culture of openness and trust, and to make teams the best they can be. 

• You have a strong passion and technical understanding of data content systems and can provide support, knowledge and mentoring to the teams. This includes helping teams to use the best engineering practices, tooling and methods and to encourage them to contribute towards inner-source activities and attend Meetups. 

• Champion the principles & aims of Transformation to guide and support teams through the Transformational change. 

• Work with Agile Coaches to create opportunities for learning and growth for all Chapters 

• Encourage engineers to join Communities of Practice, Guilds and Working Groups to deliver peer-to-peer mentoring and joint engineering initiatives via coordinated sessions and InnerSource delivery methods. 

• A highly experienced member of our wider Engineering team, and we expect the Lab Engineering Lead to drive exemplary software engineering practices as well as mentor and nurture the talent at all levels of their software engineering community 

Why Lloyds Banking Group

Like the modern Britain we serve, we’re evolving. Investing billions in our people, data, and tech to transform the way we meet the ever-changing needs of our 26 million customers. We’re growing with purpose. Join us on our journey and you will too.

What you’ll need

As a leader:

• Vision and the ability to provide an engineering strategy and roadmap 

• Self-starter who inspires and motivates the teams around you 

• Experience working with large scale data solutions and be passionate about inspiring change in data across the Group 

• Extensive software engineering background with one or more programming languages 

• Ability to listen and reflect and respect the views of others as well as being able to communicate your own opinion but you are not strongly tied to it 

• Champion an environment where teams are empowered to be autonomous and self-sufficient, and you provide purpose, guidance and support where needed 

• Passionate coach for other engineers to build a strong team culture through Chapter development 

• Ability to work effectively with multi-disciplinary, internal and external geographically distributed teams across the project lifecycle 

• Curious to learn and develop yourself with industry standard methodology and tooling, along with the tools used by their engineering teams, to make valuable contributions in validating team engineering work and decisions 

• Ability to motivate, to challenge the status quo and you have an appreciation and understanding of first principles thinking 

• Demonstrate the following Engineering Principles and Core Values within your work, whilst educating the rest of the Lab on them through Chapters. 

As an Engineer: 

• Strong knowledge of the entire software development lifecycle and experience in end- to- end delivery of software products 

• Significant experience with agile development methods & tooling e.g., Scrum, Kanban, Jira & Confluence, and experience of leading & working as part of an agile team 

• Strong software development background essential, along with knowledge of modern software development toolsets including DevOps, Continuous Integration, and Continuous Delivery 

• Are environment aware, can identify technical impediments / bottlenecks and work directly to resolve 

• Are technology agnostic and are willing to adapt approach in pursuit of the optimal solution 

• Are anchored to core engineering area and carry the ability to test, learn and mentor others 

• Understand Systems Thinking and Service Design to mitigate reactive solutions that leads to further technical debt 

• Understand the benefits of measuring change and works with teams to provide reassurance and mitigate behavioural change 

• Understand the benefits of BDD & TDD and ensure engineers write upfront tests against team defined agile definitions and delivery stories 

• Are industry aware and understand the importance of new technical approaches to evolve solutions and the experience of the team 

About working for us

Our focus is to ensure we're inclusive every day, building an organisation that reflects modern society and celebrates diversity in all its forms. We want our people to feel that they belong and can be their best, regardless of background, identity, or culture. We were one of the first major organisations to set goals on diversity in senior roles, create a menopause health package, and a dedicated Working with Cancer initiative. And it’s why we especially welcome applications from under-represented groups. We’re disability confident. So, if you’d like reasonable adjustments to be made to our recruitment processes, just let us know.

We also offer a wide-ranging benefits package, which includes:

• A generous pension contribution of up to 15%

• An annual performance-related bonus

• Share schemes including free shares.

• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping.

• Generous holiday allowance, with bank holidays on top

• A range of wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave policies

Want to do amazing work, that’s interesting and makes a difference to millions of people? Join our journey.