Lead Assurance Manager (Tech) in DIGITAL ASSURANCE & PRODUCTIVITY DIVISION in Leeds

Permanent Full time Location - Leeds or London

Day in the Role

A typical day will start by attending Daily Stand-Ups. The team will monitor environment availability morning reports and communicate outages to stakeholders. Throughout the day you will monitor and manage test environment management (TEM) bookings and facilitate contention management with relevant stakeholders and own any TEM actions. You will also represent Release and TEM at relevant meetings throughout the week. You will produce metrics to help support our processes and analyse for trends. You will be asked to operate flexibly, and when required, work out-of-hours work (including weekends).

Key Responsibilities

• Environment Strategy & Planning
• Work collaboratively with wider teams to develop, assess and maintain a strategic roadmap for Release and TEM across the development lifecycle considering enterprise system dependencies.
• Act as a representative for Release and TEM in emerging initiatives, ensuring release and environmental requirements are clearly considered and understood. Take a proactive approach by offering relevant insights and subject matter expertise.
• Coordinate environment refreshes, releases, and decommissioning activities in alignment with project/programme milestones and ensuring it's documented.
• Liaise with architecture and infrastructure teams to ensure environments are correctly sized and configured.
• Environment Provisioning & Facilitation
• Oversee environment setup.
• Manage environment bookings and scheduling to avoid contention and ensure optimal utilisation.
• Implement automation and tooling to streamline environment provisioning, monitoring and releasing.
• Governance & Risk Management
• Maintain discipline and control across environments equivalent to live operations.
• Log and track environment issues as change defects to identify patterns and drive proactive remediation.
• Ensure compliance with risk frameworks and contribute to internal processes.
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Act as the central point of contact and a representative for release and environment-related queries.
• Collaborate with test leads, programme managers, business/technical stakeholders and third-party vendors to align environment readiness with testing plans.
• Provide regular updates, metrics and reporting to governance forums and senior leadership.
• Operational Support
• Support ongoing project and portfolio testing activities, including CUPE, SABR and SCOR.
• Manage environment incidents and coordinate recovery actions in line with RTGS incident management protocols.

Minimum Criteria

• Proven experience in test environment management within financial services or regulated environments.
• Strong understanding of Bank systems, settlement processes and financial messaging.
• Familiarity with change, project, release and environment management tools such as Planview and Jira.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.

Essential Criteria

• Ability to manage competing priorities and deliver under pressure.
• Agile methodology.
• Ability to be flexible to meet the demands of both BAU and the project (some out of hours work).
• Lead, manage and mentor people.

Desirable Criteria

• ITIL or equivalent certification in service management.
• Experience with risk and control frameworks (e.g., RCSA, 3LOD).
• Ideally have a technical background to understand complex platforms and products.
• Knowledge of the TMMi framework.
• Understanding of testing methodologies, automation and AI.
• Reporting tools such as Power BI and Tableau.
• Monitoring tools such as Splunk and SquaredUp.
• DevOps and CI/CD knowledge.

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: 1-3

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. This role offers a London salary of £71,680 - £80,640. Leeds salary: £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. This role closes on 24 June 2026. Please apply online, ensuring that you complete your work history and answer ALL the application questions fully and in detail as your application will not be considered if all mandatory questions are not fully completed.