Digital Assets Engineering Manager in London

Digital assets in the UK are entering a more practical phase, moving beyond pilots towards real products, operating models and market infrastructure. That shift is creating important strategic choices for financial institutions across banking, markets, payments, wealth and asset management. It’s creating phenomenal market momentum and transformation potential.

Within EY’s Financial Services Tech Consulting team, we’re looking to expand our team to help clients navigate this transition and turn momentum into tangible outcomes. You will contribute to the delivery of high profile and complex tech engagements across a wide range of financial services clients.

EY is scaling its Digital Assets Engineering capability within FSO, supporting major financial institutions as they design and build production‑grade distributed ledger (DLT) and tokenisation platforms across markets, payments, custody, and collateral. We are seeking a hands‑on Digital Assets Manager who combines strong engineering capability with a deep understanding of financial markets and market infrastructure. This role sits at the intersection of software engineering, blockchain/DLT, and institutional finance, and is suited to someone equally comfortable writing code, leading technical delivery, and engaging credibly with front‑office and operations stakeholders.

This is a builder role. You will design architectures, write and review code, lead engineering workstreams, and help clients move from PoC to real, regulated digital asset platforms.

• Hands‑On DLT & Backend Engineering
  • Design, build, test, and deploy DLT‑ and blockchain‑based systems for financial services use cases including tokenisation, digital cash, custody, and settlement.
  • Write production‑grade code, primarily in Node.js and associated frameworks (e.g. Express, NestJS), to support APIs, orchestration layers, event processing, and integration services.
  • Design and implement smart‑contract–adjacent services, including transaction lifecycle management, signing orchestration (MPC/HSM), on‑chain/off‑chain state reconciliation, and monitoring.
  • Work across public and permissioned DLTs, integrating smart contracts with backend services and enterprise systems.
• Architecture & Platform Design
  • Design end‑to‑end technical architectures covering blockchain/DLT layers, middleware, backend services, cloud infrastructure, and integration with legacy platforms.
  • Define patterns for security, key management, identity, transaction integrity, observability, and resilience in regulated environments.
  • Make pragmatic technology choices, balancing scalability, performance, regulatory constraints, and time‑to‑market.
• Delivery Leadership (Engineering‑Focused)
  • Lead engineering workstreams within multi‑disciplinary delivery teams, managing Developers, Engineers, and Analysts.
  • Own technical delivery outcomes: code quality, performance, security, documentation, and operational readiness.
  • Conduct hands‑on code reviews and actively mentor junior engineers.
• Markets & Financial Product Enablement
  • Apply strong understanding of financial products and market structure (e.g. bonds, funds, equities, derivatives, collateral, payments) to ensure technical solutions align with how markets actually operate.
  • Design digital asset solutions that fit into real‑world trading, clearing, settlement, custody, and collateral workflows.
  • Translate front‑office, operations, and risk requirements into implementable technical designs.
• Stakeholder Engagement
  • Act as a credible technical authority in discussions with client architects, engineers, quants, operations teams, and product owners.
  • Support client workshops and technical deep dives, clearly explaining design decisions, trade‑offs, and constraints.
  • Partner with EY Risk, Legal, and Compliance specialists to embed controls into platform design.

• Passion for delivering an exceptional client service experience.
• Collaborative mind‑set.
• Outcome focused but also intellectually curious with a creative approach to problem solving.
• Excellent written, listening and verbal communication skills and a track record of building and maintaining relationships with stakeholders.
• Strong analytical skills and confidence in tackling new topics.

• Must Have
  • Typically 5–10 years of experience in backend or platform engineering, ideally within financial services or complex distributed systems.
  • Strong, demonstrable experience building backend services, including REST/event‑driven APIs.
  • Experience with modern engineering practices: CI/CD, automated testing, containerisation, infrastructure‑as‑code, and cloud‑native delivery.
  • Proven hands‑on experience delivering DLT or blockchain solutions, not just design or governance.
  • Experience working with public and/or permissioned blockchains and integrating them into enterprise systems.
  • Understanding of smart contract interaction models, transaction finality, gas/fee considerations, and network constraints.
  • Strong understanding of financial markets and market infrastructure, including: Trading, clearing, settlement; Custody and asset servicing; Collateral and margin workflows.
  • Ability to reason about how digital assets and DLT change (or do not change) existing market structures.
• Ideally You’ll Also Have
  • A good range of influencing skills.
  • A constructive and action‑oriented approach.
  • A self‑starting attitude with the ability to think and act quickly.
  • Experience working in a client‑facing professional services environment.
  • An ability to guide and coach team members to help them develop their EY careers.
  • Experience of operating in a project‑based environment.

We look for tech professionals with good knowledge of DLT and digital assets processes and products, to join our growing team to build our business and support our clients build more resilient, efficient and profitable businesses. We are looking for experienced and enthusiastic team members to drive delivery of client engagements and to develop new solutions and market insights to drive revenue growth.

We offer an attractive remuneration package where you’ll be rewarded for your performance. Our comprehensive Total Rewards package includes support for flexible working and career development, and with FlexEY you can select benefits that suit your needs, covering holidays, health and well‑being, insurance, savings and a wide range of discounts, offers and promotions.

Plus, we offer:

• Continuous learning: You’ll develop the mindset and skills to navigate whatever comes next.
• Success as defined by you: We’ll provide the tools and flexibility, so you can make a meaningful impact, your way.
• Transformative leadership: We’ll give you the insights, coaching and confidence to be the leader the world needs.
• Diverse and inclusive culture: You’ll be embraced for who you are and empowered to use your voice to help others find theirs.

Contact Apply now.