Lead Platform Engineer

<em><strong>hackajob</strong> is collaborating with <strong>Barclays</strong> to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role.<br><br></em>Salary / Rate Minimum: $220,000<br><br>Salary / Rate Maximum: $300,000<br><br>The minimum and maximum salary/rate information above includes only base salary or base hourly rate. It does not include any another type of compensation or benefits that may be available.<br><br><strong>Key Responsibilities<br><br></strong><ul><li> Global Front‑Office Success Engineering Leadership</li><li>Build and lead the global FO engineering success function across New York, London, and APAC users.</li><li>Build trusted relationships with Quants and Strats worldwide, understanding differing desk-specific needs.</li><li>Prioritize and manage work intake globally based on business impact and urgency.</li><li>Serve as the voice of FO users to influence platform roadmap and feature prioritization.</li><li> Hands-On Engineering & Troubleshooting</li><li>Write high-quality Python code for automation, integrations, internal utilities, and FO tooling.</li><li>Diagnose complex issues across cloud (AWS), distributed systems, Python stacks, notebooks, model pipelines, and APIs.</li><li>Deliver engineering solutions that reduce recurring FO friction and accelerate delivery.</li><li> AWS Engineering Support</li><li>Guide global front-office teams on secure and scalable usage of AWS services such as: S3, IAM, Lambda, ECS/EKS, Step Functions, CloudWatch, Glue, and CDK/CloudFormation.</li><li>Provide hands-on help with debugging, deployment, permissions, networking, and performance.</li><li> AI/ML Enablement</li><li>Help global FO teams onboard onto platform AI features such as inference gateways, embeddings, evaluation tools, and tracing.</li><li>Provide guidance on AI/ML concepts: model inference, RAG, embeddings, vector stores, latency optimisation, guardrails.</li><li>Support adoption of tools such as LiteLLM, MLflow, Langfuse, Mem0, Databricks, SageMaker, and Observe.</li><li> Developer Experience & Operational Excellence</li><li>Establish global support processes, workflows, and standards.</li><li>Identify patterns in recurring issues and partner with platform engineering to eliminate them via features or automation.</li><li>Develop and maintain documentation, onboarding guides, and best practices tailored for FO developers.</li><li>Drive proactive monitoring of systems impacting FO teams.</li><li> Leadership & Mentorship</li><li>Lead and mentor a small team of engineers focused on FO success.</li><li>Set strong engineering standards for code quality, reliability, and FO responsiveness.</li><li>Promote a culture of collaboration, empathy, accountability, and excellence.</li><li> Governance & Risk Management</li><li>Ensure all FO support and deployment workflows comply with governance, model controls, and data privacy requirements.</li><li>Promote secure-by-default patterns across global FO usage.</li><li>Help enforce model governance standards and audit requirements.<br><br></li></ul><strong>Required Skills & Experience<br><br></strong><ul><li>Strong Python engineering experience (backend, tooling, automation, debugging).</li><li>Hands-on expertise with AWS: IAM, S3, Lambda, ECS/EKS, Step Functions, CloudWatch.</li><li>Proven experience working with Quants, Strats, or front‑office engineering teams.</li><li>Solid understanding of AI/ML concepts (inference, vector search, embeddings, RAG, evaluation).</li><li>Strong debugging abilities across cloud infra, Python environments, containers, and pipelines.</li><li>Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills in high-pressure FO environments.</li><li>Experience leading a technical team or owning a global-facing engineering function.<br><br></li></ul><strong>Desirable Skills<br><br></strong><ul><li>Familiarity with tools such as LiteLLM, MLflow, Databricks, SageMaker, Langfuse, Observe, Mem0.</li><li>Understanding of financial markets, derivatives, FO analytics workflows, or pricing/risk models.</li><li>Exposure to model governance, compliance, and data control frameworks.</li><li>Experience with Docker, ECS/EKS, and platform observability tooling.</li><li>Experience improving developer productivity or reliability at scale.<br><br></li></ul><strong>Purpose of the role<br><br></strong>To design, develop and improve software, utilising various engineering methodologies, that provides business, platform, and technology capabilities for our customers and colleagues.<br><br><strong>Accountabilities<br><br></strong><ul><li>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.</li><li>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.</li><li>Collaboration with peers, participate in code reviews, and promote a culture of code quality and knowledge sharing.</li><li>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.</li><li>Adherence to secure coding practices to mitigate vulnerabilities, protect sensitive data, and ensure secure software solutions.</li><li>Implementation of effective unit testing practices to ensure proper code design, readability, and reliability.<br><br></li></ul><strong>Director Expectations<br><br></strong><ul><li>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.</li><li>Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub-function.</li><li>Escalates breaches of policies / procedure appropriately.</li><li>Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence.</li><li>Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate.</li><li>Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives.</li><li>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.</li><li>Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations.</li><li>Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or recommendations within own area.</li><li>Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.</li><li>Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/ businesses divisions.</li><li>Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.<br><br></li></ul>All Senior 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.<br><br>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.