Engineering Excellence Lead

Barclays; Glasgow; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Barclays is seeking an Engineering Excellence Lead to elevate engineering practices across the organisation. You will work in the Engineering Excellence Team within the Development Platform, driving education, community engagement, and adoption of modern tools, platforms, and best practices.

Based at the Glasgow Campus, you will coach engineers at scale, create demos and content, and influence technical direction while collaborating with cross-functional partners.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience in modern development practices (CI/CD, DevOps, IaC).
• Proficiency in at least one major language (Python, Java, C#, Go, etc.).
• Ability to build demos, workshops, prototypes and code samples for education.
• Excellent public speaking and presentation skills for large audiences.

Responsibilities

• Develop and elevate engineering practices across Barclays.
• Drive developer education, community engagement and platform enablement.
• Create technical demos, workshops and code samples for training.
• Coach, mentor and engage stakeholders to scale engineering capabilities.
• Contribute to secure coding, testing practices and code quality.
• Share insights via content, events, and technical communities.

Skills

Software engineering

CI/CD

Public speaking

Prototyping

Tools

Claude Code

Job description

Join Barclays as an Engineering Excellence Lead, where you will help shape and elevate engineering practices across the organisation. Working within the Engineering Excellence Team in the Development Platform organisation, you will drive developer education, community engagement, and the adoption of modern engineering tools, platforms, and best practices. This highly impactful role combines deep technical expertise with coaching, mentoring, and stakeholder engagement, enabling you to influence engineers at scale through training, workshops, content creation, events, platform enablement, and data-driven insights. If you are passionate about software engineering, developer experience, and helping others grow their technical capabilities, this is an opportunity to make a lasting impact across Barclays' engineering community.

To be successful in this role, you will need:

• Strong software engineering background, with hands-on experience in modern development practices (CI/CD, DevOps, Infrastructure as Code, etc.).
• Proficiency in at least one major programming language (e.g., Python, Java, C#, Go, etc.).
• Ability to build technical demos, hands-on workshops, prototypes, and code samples to support education efforts.
• Excellent public speaking and presentation skills, comfortable addressing audiences of all sizes.

Some other highly valued skills include:

• Hands-on experience with Agentic-AI tools such a Claude Code.
• A natural community builder with a talent for engaging and motivating developers.
• Passion for teaching, mentoring, and helping others grow.
• Strong technical writing skills, with the ability to simplify complex concepts for diverse audiences.

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

The successful candidate will be based in Glasgow Campus.

Purpose of the role

To design, develop and improve software, utilising various engineering methodologies, that provides business, platform, and technology capabilities for our customers and colleagues.

Accountabilities

• Development and delivery of high-quality software solutions by using industry aligned programming languages, frameworks, and tools. Ensuring that code is scalable, maintainable, and optimized for performance.
• Cross-functional collaboration with product managers, designers, and other engineers to define software requirements, devise solution strategies, and ensure seamless integration and alignment with business objectives.
• Collaboration with peers, participate in code reviews, and promote a culture of code quality and knowledge sharing.
• Stay informed of industry technology trends and innovations and actively contribute to the organization’s technology communities to foster a culture of technical excellence and growth.
• Adherence to secure coding practices to mitigate vulnerabilities, protect sensitive data, and ensure secure software solutions.
• Implementation of effective unit testing practices to ensure proper code design, readability, and reliability.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/processes; deliver continuous improvements and accelerate breaches of policies/procedures.
• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements.
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.
• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions.
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.