Director of Software Engineering

About Us

BACB is a UK bank that offers trade finance and complementary products to clients in specialist markets, especially Africa and the Middle East.

We have been helping businesses with trade finance and complementary products for over half a century, focusing on trade flows to and from Africa and the Middle East as well as real estate in the UK.

Our in-depth knowledge of the countries and practices where our clients operate ensures that we put them first.

Additional Info

• Hybrid Working: 3 days onsite, 2 from home
• Location: City of London
• Contract Type: Permanent

Job Summary

The Director of Software Engineering & Enterprise Architecture sits on the IT Leadership team and reports directly to the Head of IT. This role will provide strategic and technical leadership across the bank's technology landscape ensuring that the enterprise architecture supports business goals while leading the software engineering team to deliver secure, scalable, and innovative solutions.

They will work closely with the Chief Operating Officer, Head of IT and the Change team to define technology direction, establish architecture and engineering standards, and build the internal capability to design and deliver modern resilient systems.

This role will provide strategic and technical leadership across infrastructure, applications, data, and security domains, ensuring technology decisions are aligned with enterprise standards and deliver long-term sustainable value. Working closely with senior business, Change and IT stakeholders, the Director of Software Engineering & Enterprise Architect will develop and govern the enterprise architecture framework, will design target-state roadmaps, and oversee solution designs for key initiatives. The role balances strategic vision with practical implementation, helping the bank modernise legacy systems, strengthen resilience, and enable digital transformation.

Key Work Outputs and Accountabilities

Strategic & Enterprise Architecture:

• Develop and maintain the enterprise architecture roadmap aligned to business strategy and regulatory requirements. Including owning and delivering a current state assessment of the Bank's enterprise architecture working with key stakeholders and the wider IT team.
• Own and deliver a gap analysis between current state and targe state developing a roadmap to target.
• Define and establish fit for purpose architecture governance framework including principles, and technology standards, to ensure coherence, scalability, and security.
• Oversee solution architecture for key programmes and major change initiatives.
• Evaluate and select core platforms, tools and integration strategies that support digital transformation.
• Partner with business (including Change) and technology leaders to translate strategic goals into technology capabilities.
• Govern architecture compliance and technical debt management through structured review processes.
• Identify relevant, already established governance bodies, to ensure appropriate sign-off and approval processes are followed.
• Proactively provide recommendations for relevant technology innovation to improve efficiency, resilience, or customer experience.
• Play a key role in facilitating decisions and review of key architecture decisions in Architecture Review Forums (ARB)

Software Engineering Leadership:

• Lead and grow the software engineering team, fostering a culture of quality, accountability and continuous improvement.
• Define engineering practices including DevSecOps, CI/CD, test automation, and modern software design principles.
• Oversee design, build, and implementation of internal and customer-facing applications.
• Ensure delivery discipline, code quality, and alignment with architectural standards.
• Drive adoption of cloud-native and API-first architectures where appropriate.
• Establish metrics to monitor performance, reliability, and delivery effectiveness.

Collaboration & Governance:

• Act as the technical liaison between IT, business (including Change team), and operations teams.
• Provide expert input to IT governance forums, investment decisions, and risk management processes.
• Support vendor selection, contract review, and third-party architecture assessments.
• Mentor team members across IT to develop internal talent and succession pipelines.

Key Deliverables:

• A well-defined, pragmatic, and communicated enterprise architecture roadmap.
• High-performing, motivated software engineering team delivering to time, cost and quality.
• Consistent application of security, resilience, and compliance standards across all technology solutions.
• Reduction in technical debt and increased reusability of components.
• Improved alignment between business strategy, architecture, and delivery execution.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Proven experience leading software engineering at a senior management or director level, ideally in a regulated environment.
• Deep understanding of enterprise software development, architecture, and delivery practices.
• Experience in leading large-scale transformation, including agile and DevOps adoption.
• Strong understanding of core banking systems, digital channels, and integration architectures
• Familiarity with Temenos T24 and other similar vendor platforms within in Core Banking / Trade Finance domain
• Strong understanding of core banking systems, digital channels, and integration architectures
• Practical experience designing secure, scalable, and resilient solutions across infrastructure, data, application, and security domains.
• Strong demonstratable hands-on experience in Azure Cloud technology stack, microservices, APIs, and integration patterns.
• Familiarity with cybersecurity, data governance, and DevOps practices.
• Proven experience with Data Architecture, Data Lake/Warehouses, ETL/ELT tech stack, Medallion architecture, Data Ops & Data Governance and visualization tools
• Excellent communication, leadership, and stakeholder management skills, capable of influencing at senior levels.
• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Information Technology/Systems, Engineering, or related field.
• Relevant professional certifications (e.g., TOGAF, Azure Architecture etc) are desirable.