Application Platform Lead in RTGS Technology

Role overview

The Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service sits at the centre of the UK’s financial system, settling on average £800bn per day and operating as UK Critical National Infrastructure. This role provides an opportunity to lead application engineering for a service where reliability, resilience and engineering quality genuinely matter.

RTGS operates within a highly secure environment and follows a product centric operating model, combining strong operational accountability with an automation first approach to testing, deployment and live service operations. Continuous improvement and the reduction of obsolescence are core to how the service is designed, delivered and evolved.

As an Application Platform Lead , you will lead engineering across application product teams within RTGS. You will develop technical leaders, establish clear standards for engineering quality and operability, and drive sustained improvements in how applications are built, tested, released and operated in production.

This is a senior leadership role for an experienced engineering manager or an established Technical Team Lead, who is ready to take the next step into a broader engineering management role. You will bring a strong technical background, proven people leadership capability, and the credibility to engage on complex application design and delivery trade offs in a regulated, high availability environment.

A day in the role

Your day might begin with a review of delivery and service health across the application teams — understanding what’s progressing, where teams are blocked, and where risk may be emerging.

You may have 1:1s with Technical Team Leads or senior engineers, coaching through delivery and people challenges, supporting career development, and strengthening leadership capability across teams.

As you are accountable for application engineering outcomes, you will spend time looking across teams to identify systemic improvement opportunities — for example where automation could reduce manual effort, where testing or release discipline could be strengthened, or where technical debt is impacting reliability, cost or delivery flow.

You will work closely with Product Owners, Architecture and Platform Engineering to shape delivery plans, clarify trade offs, and ensure work is well prepared and operationally ready in a regulated, high availability environment.

If an incident occurs, you will support calm and effective decision making under pressure, then ensure learning is translated into concrete improvements that reduce the likelihood of recurrence.

Towards the end of the day, you may contribute to governance, audit or leadership discussions, ensuring engineering standards, tooling, evidence and practices remain strong and sustainable.

Flexible Working Options

This role is open to flexible working patterns, these may include:

• Job share

• Flexible start and end time to each day

• Part time

• Ability to adapt calendar as needed, this could be to fit in the school run, gym, or appointments

• A 50% in-office attendance requirement can be spread across the month to accommodate diverse working patterns, such as the flexibility to purchase a weekly train ticket for certain weeks

• Compressed hours (subject to approval and policy within the team)

• Working from abroad policy (subject to approval and policy within the team)

Opportunities in Leeds

We’re excited to be growing our presence in Leeds, a city we’ve been connected to for nearly 200 years! Our modern, accessible office in the City Centre offers a supportive, flexible working environment. The majority of roles, including this one, are now available in Leeds, giving you the chance to build a meaningful career outside of London while contributing to our mission from a dynamic and growing location. You’ll work collaboratively with London-based colleagues in a hybrid model, with regular opportunities to travel into the London office to meet and connect together in person.

Want to learn more? Discover what makes our Leeds office such a dynamic place to work by visiting our Leeds page for more details.

Role Requirements

RTGS settles on average £800bn per day and is Critical National Infrastructure.

As an Application Platform Lead within the RTGS Technology team, you will report to the RTGS Technology Product Lead. You are an integral part of the team running and evolving this mission critical service.

You will be accountable for capacity planning and balancing demand across live service, change initiatives and continuous improvement work, ensuring teams can deliver sustainably while maintaining service stability.

You will act as a senior escalation point for application engineering during live service incidents, including out of hours where required.

You will also be accountable for the tooling and technology used within application teams, ensuring it is appropriately governed, well maintained, cost aware, and aligned with engineering standards and compliance expectations.

You will represent application engineering in audit, assurance and regulatory reviews, working with relevant partners to ensure controls, evidence and compliance artefacts are robust, accurate and kept up to date.

Where required, you will support recruitment and resourcing decisions, including contributing to business cases for permanent or contingent resources.

You are someone who will:

• Provide overall leadership for multiple application teams delivering and supporting complex, mission critical products.

• Line manage Technical Team Leads, with accountability for performance, development and leadership capability across teams.

• Act as a servant leader, removing systemic blockers and improving flow through the delivery lifecycle.

• Champion modern engineering practices, including automation, continuous improvement, strong testing discipline and robust release readiness.

• Set and maintain a consistent bar for engineering quality, operability and resilience across teams.

• Ensure technical debt and sustainability work is visible, planned and delivered alongside functional change.

• Take a systems level view across teams, balancing short term delivery with long t erm maintainability, resilience and cost.

• Act as a senior escalation point during live service incidents, including out of hours and nighttime incidents where required, providing calm, credible leadership and ensuring learning leads to measurable improvement.

• Maintain a high hiring bar and build sustainable team structures, including effective onboarding and succession planning.

• Create clear development pathways and support progression through regular feedback and career development conversations.

• Build trusted partnerships with Product Owners and influence product roadmaps through strong engineering judgement.

• Possess the gravitas and influencing skills required to engage, influence and challenge senior stakeholders constructively.

• Actively contribute to RTGS Technology leadership discussions, and continuous improvement initiatives across the domain.

• Represent application engineering confidently in audit, assurance and regulatory engagements.

Minimum Criteria

We’re looking for someone who has demonstrable experience in:

• An engineering background, with prior hands‑on experience building or operating software systems, and the technical judgement to engage credibly on application design, risk, and operational concerns.

• Experience working with modern application technology stacks, such as containerised or distributed systems, APIs, data stores, and messaging or event‑driven architectures, with sufficient depth to understand operability, resilience, and scalability trade‑offs.

• Experience leading and managing software engineering teams delivering and operating complex, high‑availability systems.

• Experience working in live service environments with strong operational, risk, and governance expectations.

• Line management and people leadership experience, including performance management, coaching, and development of engineers.

• Experience working with modern software delivery practices, including automation, CI/CD pipelines, and strong testing and release discipline in production environments.

Experience balancing delivery demand against operational stability and long‑term sustainability, making pragmatic trade‑offs to protect service resilience.

Essential Criteria

We are interested in hearing from candidates who can:

• Set and maintain high engineering standards across one or more teams, driving consistent outcomes in quality, reliability and operability.

• Take a systems level view, removing blockers, improving delivery flow, and ensuring technical debt and sustainability are actively managed.

• Provide calm, credible leadership during live service incidents and ensure learning leads to measurable improvement.

• Influence and challenge senior stakeholders constructively, using sound engineering judgement.

• Build inclusive, high performing team(s) and develop future technical and engineering leaders.

Desirable Criteria

It would also be beneficial, but not necessary, to have:

• Experience owning or governing engineering tooling and technology within teams, including evaluation, lifecycle management and cost awareness.

• Experience working in financial services, critical infrastructure, or similarly regulated environments.

• Experience leading teams through modernisation or transformation initiatives, such as increasing automation or reducing operational burden.

• Familiarity with disciplined production change, audit, and incident management practices in high availability services.

This is a people management role. You will be responsible for day to day management of the team and for defining roles and responsibilities. You will develop your team through sharing information effectively, coaching and communicating a clear vision to ensure that your staff are productive, engaged and motivated to deliver the area's aims. This will include setting clear goals and smart stretching objectives that are aligned to those of the team, division and directorate. You will also be responsible for managing all staff-related matters that may arise including performance, absence and sickness.

Number of direct reports: 10-15

Our Approach to Inclusion

The Bank values diversity, equity and inclusion. We play a key role in maintaining monetary and financial stability, and to do that effectively, we believe we need a workforce that reflects the society we serve.

At the Bank of England, we want all colleagues to feel valued and respected, so we're working hard to build an inclusive culture which supports people from all backgrounds and communities to be at their best at work. We celebrate all forms of diversity, including (but not limited to) age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status. We believe that it’s by drawing on different perspectives and experiences that we’ll continue to make the best decisions for the public.

We welcome applications from individuals who work flexibly, including job shares and part time working patterns. We've also partnered with external organisations to support us in making adjustments for candidates and employees in the recruitment process where they're needed.

For most roles where work can be carried out at home, we aim for colleagues to spend half of their time in the office, with a minimum of 40% per month. Subject to that minimum requirement, individuals and managers should work together to find what works best for them, their team and stakeholders.

Finally, we're proud to be a member of the Disability Confident Scheme . If you wish to apply under this scheme, you should check the box in the ‘Candidate Personal Information’ under the ‘Disability Confident Scheme’ section of the application.

Salary and Benefits Information

We encourage flexible working, part time working and job share arrangements. Part time salary and benefits will be on a pro-rated basis as appropriate.

We offer a salary as follows: £64,480 - 72,540

In addition, we also offer a comprehensive benefits package as detailed below:

• Currently a non-contributory, career average pension giving you a guaranteed retirement benefit of 1/80th of your annual salary for every year worked. There is the option to increase your pension (to 1/65th) or decrease (to 1/105th) in exchange for salary through our flexible benefits programme each year. The Bank has the discretion to vary standard accrual rates and dial up and dial down rates at any time and to withdraw dial up and dial down options at any time.
• A discretionary performance award based on a current award pool.
• An 8% benefits allowance with the option to take as salary or purchase a wide range of flexible benefits.
• 26 days’ annual leave with option to buy up to 12 additional days through flexible benefits.
• Private medical insurance and income protection.

National Security Vetting Process

Employment in this role will be subject to the National Security Vetting clearance process (and typically can take between 6 to 12 weeks post offer) and the passing of additional Bank security checks in accordance with the Bank policy. Further information regarding the vetting and security clearance requirements for the role will be provided to the successful applicant, and information about how the Bank processes personal data for these purposes, is set out in the Bank's Privacy Notice .

The Bank of England welcomes applications from all candidates, but as a UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) approved sponsor, we have a responsibility to comply with the Immigration Rules and guidance. As such, our ability to employ individuals who require sponsorship for immigration purposes is limited. The Bank cannot guarantee that you and / or the role you are applying for will be eligible for sponsorship and that any application made to UKVI will be successful. Eligibility will therefore be considered on a case by case basis.

The Application Process

Important: Please ensure that you complete the ‘work history’ section and answer ALL the application questions fully. All candidate applications are anonymised to ensure that our hiring managers will not be able to see your personal information, including your CV, when reviewing your application details at the screening stage. It’s therefore really important that you fill out the work history and application form questions, as your answers will form a critical part of the initial selection process.

The assessment process will comprise of two interview stages; the first a technical round, the second a competency round.

This role closes on 5th May 2026 .