Data & ML Platform Lead

Lloyds Banking Group; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 107,000 - 126,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension up to 15%

Annual bonus

Share schemes

Discounts

30 days holiday

Wellbeing initiatives

Job summary

Lloyds Banking Group is seeking a Data & ML Platform Lead in London to steer a hybrid, hands‑on platform engineering team responsible for core data ingestion, real‑time decisioning and ML capability platforms. The role demands strong leadership, cloud‑native design, and production reliability in a regulated banking environment.

You will shape architecture for streaming pipelines, feature stores, and scalable data services, aligning with bank‑grade standards while collaborating across Curve

Qualifications

• Significant experience in data engineering, platform engineering or similar roles with leadership to engineers.
• Deep production experience with streaming technologies, ideally Kafka, and event‑driven architectures at scale.
• Proven experience designing and operating production systems on GCP (BigQuery, Managed Airflow, Cloud Run, Dataflow).
• Strong programming ability in Python and experience with at least one systems language (Go preferred).
• Experience building/operating real‑time services and batch/streaming data pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary platform engineering team.
• Own the design and reliability of Kafka‑based decisioning services and data pipelines.
• Ensure platform operates to bank‑grade reliability, auditability and scale within Lloyds Banking Group integration.
• Oversee cloud infrastructure and orchestration, including Terraform, Kubernetes and Airflow in production.

Skills

Data engineering

Platform engineering

Kafka

GCP

Python

Terraform

Kubernetes

Airflow

ML systems

Observability

Tools

BigQuery

Managed Airflow

Cloud Run

Dataflow

Terraform

Job description

JOB TITLE: Data & ML Platform Lead

SALARY: £107,304 - £126,240

LOCATION: London

HOURS: Full-Time

WORKING PATTERN:

Our work style is hybrid, which involves spending at least two days per week, or 40% of our time, at one of our office sites. Colleagues with disabilities can be supported with workplace adjustments including hybrid working expectations in line with our Flexibility Works policy.

What you'll be doing…

As a Data & ML Platform Lead, you will lead the team responsible for building and operating the infrastructure at the core of Curve's business. You'll own the platform supporting streaming and batch data ingestion, reverse-ETL, real-time decisioning for fraud and financial crime, and the ML and agentic AI capabilities increasingly used across the organisation. This is a hands‑on platform engineering role where you'll lead and develop a multidisciplinary team while remaining closely involved in the most complex architectural challenges. You'll own the design and reliability of Kafka‑based decisioning services, data pipelines, orchestration, feature stores and underlying cloud infrastructure, ensuring the platform operates to bank‑grade standards of reliability, auditability and scale as Curve integrates into Lloyds Banking Group.

Why Join us?

If you think all banks are the same, you're wrong. We're a pioneering, fast‑changing business that’s shaping finance as a force for good. If you're after a role where you can have an impact and do the best work of your career, you've just found it

What we're looking for?

• Significant experience in data engineering, platform engineering or similar roles, including experience leading or providing sustained technical leadership to engineers
• Deep production experience with streaming technologies, ideally Kafka, and event‑driven architectures operating at scale
• Proven experience designing and operating production systems on GCP, including technologies such as BigQuery, Managed Airflow, Cloud Run and Dataflow, or equivalent cloud infrastructure
• Strong programming ability in Python and experience with at least one systems language, ideally Go
• Experience building and operating real‑time services as well as batch and streaming data pipelines
• Experience with Terraform, Kubernetes and infrastructure as code
• Strong experience operating orchestration platforms such as Airflow reliably in production
• Experience deploying and operating ML systems in production, including feature stores, model serving or ML‑driven decisioning systems
• Experience designing reliable, observable platforms with clear SLAs, monitoring, alerting, load testing and capacity planning
• Strong understanding of operating technology within regulated environments, including audit trails, control evidencing, change governance and production systems with compliance implications
• Experience designing safe deployment approaches including feature flags, shadow modes, staged rollouts and reversible releases
• A track record of automating manual operational processes and building systems that are scalable, reliable and maintainable
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to set technical direction, delegate effectively and develop engineers into owners of the systems they operate

And it would be great if you had any of the following...

• Experience building or operating LLM and agentic AI workflows in production
• Experience within financial crime, fraud, credit or risk decisioning environments
• Experience integrating technology platforms with large banking organisations or banking vendor ecosystems
• Hands‑on experience with Feast
• Experience with Snowplow
• Experience supporting dbt from a platform or enablement perspective
• Experience with load‑testing frameworks for data‑intensive systems
• Experience within fintech, financial services, payments or retail banking
• Experience building real‑time decisioning systems with regulatory or financial consequences
• Experience supporting high‑volume transaction platforms as they scale

This is a place for you…

Our ambition is to be the leading UK business for diversity, equity and inclusion, supporting our customers, colleagues and communities. We are committed to creating an environment in which everyone can thrive, learn and develop.

We were one of the first major organisations to set goals on diversity in senior roles, create a menopause health package, and launch a dedicated Working with Cancer initiative. We offer reasonable workplace adjustments for colleagues with disabilities, including flexibility in office attendance, location and working patterns. As a Disability Confident Leader, we guarantee interviews for a fair and proportionate number of applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the role and have a disability, long‑term health or neurodivergent condition, through the Disability Confident Scheme.

We provide reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process to reduce or remove barriers - just let us know what you need.

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

• A generous pension contribution of up to 15%
• An annual bonus award, subject to Group performance
• Share schemes including free shares
• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping
• 30 days' holiday, with bank holidays on top
• A range of wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave policies