Software Engineering Team Lead Core (API & UI), RTGS Technology

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.

London: £71,680 - £80,640

Leeds: £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.

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.

Software Engineering Team Lead Core (API & UI), RTGS Technology

Most great engineers don't set out to manage people. They set out to build something good. At some point, the best of them realise that building something good at scale means more than writing great code yourself - it means shaping the team, the standards, and what "good" means for everyone around you. If that's the point you're at, this role is built for you.

As Software Engineering Team Lead for the Core (API & UI) team, you'll own the technical health of the services through which users and systems interact with RTGS. The team is responsible for APIs, user interfaces and access services that enable participants and connected systems to interact with RTGS securely and reliably. Every standard you set, every call you make about what's good enough, happens at a scale most engineers never get near.

You stay in the code, retaining the ability to engage directly with complex implementation and production issues where required. You decide what good looks like for your team, and you build the conditions for it. You're the technical counterpart to the Product Owner - together you decide what gets built next, and when to fix what's broken, simplify what's overcomplicated, and make the whole thing better.

You'll also be investing in the engineers around you - the people doing this work alongside you are as much your responsibility as the systems they build. Helping them grow, and building a team people want to be part of, is not separate from the job. It is the job, just as much as the code is.

This team follows a you "build it, you own it" model. What you ship is yours - including how it behaves once it's live. And as you grow into the role, so does it: more influence over the domain's direction, more say in how the team works, more of a hand in what comes next.

Your day might begin with the team stand-up - a short sprint check-in where you cut through the noise, surface what actually matters, and make sure the team is pointed in the right direction. You know the codebase and domain well enough to judge what is hard, what is risky, and where focus is required.

You may spend much of your morning in the code itself - reviewing pull requests with rigour, pairing on complex service behaviour, API capabilities, user-facing functionality or production issues that require technical depth and sound engineering judgement. Your experience allows you to engage meaningfully, not just oversee. How much time you spend here depends on your team: if your team is experienced and self-sufficient, you may have more space to contribute directly to design and implementation; if the team needs more guidance and support, more of your time may go into coaching, unblocking and strengthening engineering practices. Both are normal and valuable version of this role.

Mid-morning, you may be in a design session with the Solution Designer, reviewing a new API capability, user-facing feature, or service interaction, stress-testing it against production realities and ensuring failure scenarios, operational considerations and recovery paths are understood before development begins.

After lunch, you could be in a roadmap conversation with the Product Owner - working through what comes next together, making sure there's room for the technical debt, resilience, and improvement work that keeps the domain healthy, alongside the features that matter to the business.

Later, you may have a 1:1 with an engineer - providing direct feedback, supporting their development, and helping them grow into stronger engineers over time.

No two days are the same, but the thread is consistent: keeping the team clear, supported, and moving. Sometimes that means writing code. Sometimes removing blockers. Sometimes asking the right question before a bad commitment is made. And sometimes leading a calm, effective response when something goes wrong in production.

RTGS Technology is moving to a product engineering model, with teams aligned to business and platform domains. The Core (API & UI) team owns the services through which users and systems interact with RTGS, including APIs, user interfaces and access capabilities. Working closely with Core (Backend Services), the team provides secure, reliable and observable access to RTGS functionality.

As Software Engineering Team Lead, you are the technical heartbeat of the team - the person who holds the engineering bar and makes sure delivery stays coherent from design through to production, working alongside a Product Owner, Solution Designer, and Scrum Master who each bring their own part of the picture.

As the team and your capability grow, so will your influence over the domain's technical direction - architecture, tooling, and the long-term evolution of the platform

As Software Engineering Team Lead within Core (API & UI), you will own the engineering quality, technical direction, and delivery outcomes of a team responsible for the services through which users and systems access RTGS capabilities.

This isn't a role where you step back from the work to coordinate it. Your technical judgement directly shapes what gets built, how it is built, and how the team grows - which is exactly why people who care about the craft tend to find this rewarding.

You will:

• Stay in the code - taking on complex, high-impact work alongside your team, not just reviewing what others build. The balance between coding and leading shifts with your team's maturity: when the team is performing well, it largely runs itself and you have more room to go deep technically; when it's still developing, your energy goes into coaching & building the conditions for the team to reach that point.
• Lead by example in code reviews and implementation decisions, holding end-to-end accountability for the quality, resilience, and operability of the services your team builds and runs
• Own how your services behave in production - monitoring, alerting, reliability, and operational health - ensuring they meet the auditability, traceability, and recoverability expectations of a high-value, regulated environment
• Work closely with the Solution Designer to pressure-test technical approaches and translate designs into clear, buildable components
• Define, adopt, and enforce engineering standards across the team, including:
• Testing discipline and coverage
• Code quality and review practices
• Deployment safety and release readiness
• Incident response and operational learning
• Security by Design
• Act as technical counterpart to the Product Owner and co-own the roadmap - making room for technical debt, efficiencies, and continuous improvement alongside features, and forecasting what your team can realistically deliver
• Line-manage your engineers - performance, development, progression, and promotion and build a team environment where people are supported, challenged, and growing
• Take an active role in hiring for your team, including interviewing and assessing candidates
• Track engineering health metrics (e.g. deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, recovery time) to guide investment, and work with peer Team Leads across RTGS Technology to share patterns, solve cross-team problems, and raise standards more broadly
• Participate in on-call as a senior escalation point - leading calm, effective incident response and fostering a blameless culture of thorough post-incident learning

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

• Flexible start and end times to each day
• A 50% in-office attendance requirement that can be spread across the month, with flexibility to reflect operational commitments such as on-call activity
• There will be occasional out-of-hours activity to support production releases and change testing, which may include limited weekend or non-core hours working