Solution Designer, RTGS Technology in Leeds

RTGS is the Bank of England’s Real Time Gross Settlement service - critical national infrastructure that underpins the UK financial system, settling hundreds of billions of pounds each day.

We are looking for a Solution Designer to play a key role in shaping how RTGS evolves. Working closely with engineering teams, you will ensure that changes - particularly across payment flows, integrations, and platform services - are clearly understood, buildable, and resilient before and during delivery.

This role sits at the intersection of strategy, architecture, and delivery, turning roadmap intent into clear, practical designs grounded in real engineering experience - ensuring solutions work in practice, not just in theory, including failure scenarios, recovery, and operational constraints.

Flexible Working Options

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

• Flexible start and end time to each day
• Ability to adapt calendar as needed, this could be to fit in the school run, gym, or appointments
• A 50% in-office attendance requirement that can be spread across the month, with flexibility to reflect operational commitments such as on-call and out-of-hours work
• Working from abroad policy (subject to approval and policy within the team)

Opportunities in Leeds:

We’re excited to be growing our presence in Leeds, a city we’ve been connected to for nearly 200 years! Our modern, accessible office in the City Centre offers a supportive, flexible working environment. The majority of roles, including this one, are now available in Leeds, giving you the chance to build a meaningful career outside of London while contributing to our mission from a dynamic and growing location. You’ll work collaboratively with London-based colleagues in a hybrid model, with regular opportunities to travel into the London office to meet and connect together in person.

A day in the role:

Your day might start with the team’s stand-up — a short sprint check-in where engineers share progress and surface blockers, while you anticipate upcoming work and where design clarity will be needed. Mid-morning, you may be working through a solution design for an upcoming change - mapping payment flows, integration points, data flows, and dependencies, and identifying the key decisions required before development begins. Where an approach carries real uncertainty, you may run a time-boxed proof of concept - getting hands-on to validate that the design will work before engineering commits to build.

You might then sit down with a Platform Team Lead to sense-check the approach - ensuring it is practical, can be delivered incrementally, and aligns with how the system operates today.

After lunch, you could be working with a Product Owner, Architect, or Business Analyst to shape a new initiative - asking the questions that surface constraints and risks early, before scope is committed.

Later in the day, you may be working directly with engineers to resolve a complex issue - drawing on your own engineering experience to shape the right approach, particularly around failure handling or recovery behaviour.

No two days are the same - but the focus is consistent: giving engineering teams the clarity and context they need to build the right things, safely and effectively.

Role Requirements:

You will act as the translation layer between roadmap and delivery, working across RTGS teams to ensure changes are clearly designed.

You will:

• Translate roadmap initiatives into clear, detailed designs that engineering teams can build and operate, including:
• Payment and settlement flows
• Service interactions and integration patterns (APIs, messaging, eventing)
• Data flows and dependencies
• Failure handling and recovery scenarios
• Where approaches carry meaningful uncertainty, design and execute time-boxed proofs of concept to validate assumptions and de-risk decisions before engineering delivery
• Produce lightweight design artefacts and decision records to support delivery
• Work day-to-day with engineering teams to:
• Break designs into deliverable components
• Resolve ambiguity early
• Support implementation as solutions evolve
• Bring strong engineering judgement, using experience from building and operating systems to guide design decisions
• Guide key design decisions, balancing:
• Simplicity vs resilience
• Speed vs control
• Reuse vs bespoke solutions
• Ensure solutions are:
• Resilient and operable
• Traceable and auditable
• Able to recover and replay where required
• Identify dependencies across services and teams early and support consistent design approaches
• Ensure designs remain coherent across services and teams as they evolve through delivery
• Help grow design and architectural thinking within engineering teams over time

Minimum Criteria

• Experience producing solution designs or technical blueprints that others can build from
• Experience working with engineering teams in a delivery environment
• Understanding of system interactions, integrations, and data flows
• Ability to communicate technical ideas clearly across technical and non-technical audiences

Essential Criteria

• A strong background in software engineering - you will have built, delivered, and operated real systems, progressing through senior or lead engineering roles
• Proven experience as a Solution Designer, Solution Architect, or Technical Architect in a complex, regulated, or critical systems environment
• Strong understanding of:
• Distributed systems and integration patterns in complex production environments
• APIs, messaging, and service-based architectures
• Data flows and consistency
• Experience validating technical approaches through hands-on proofs of concept or spikes
• Experience working closely with engineering teams to shape and evolve solutions
• Ability to think through real-world scenarios, including failure and recovery
• Strong communication skills and ability to guide decision-making
• Comfortable working across multiple areas simultaneously, prioritising based on complexity and risk
• A commitment to growing engineering and design capability within teams over time

Desirable Criteria

• Experience in financial services, payments, or regulated environments
• Familiarity with RTGS or high-value transaction systems
• Exposure to ISO 20022 messaging
• Experience with messaging platforms (e.g. IBM MQ, Kafka)
• Experience supporting teams moving from project-based to product-based delivery
• Familiarity with lightweight design documentation (e.g. ADRs)
• Awareness of platform engineering concepts and internal platforms

Don’t hesitate to apply if you don’t meet all of the criteria. We value diverse perspectives and believe different experiences lead to stronger teams and better outcomes.

How this role fits into the wider Bank:

RTGS Technology is undergoing a significant transformation, moving to a product engineering model with teams aligned to business and platform domains.

This role exists to close the gap between strategic intent, architecture, and delivery reality - ensuring changes are understood, buildable, and coherent from design through to delivery.

You will work closely with Platform Leads, Product Owners, Architects, and engineers to ensure changes are well understood before build and remain coherent through delivery.

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.

From 1st October 2026, we expect all our colleagues to spend a minimum of 50% of their working time in the office per month. This is to capitalise on the benefits of working together in person across teams, while maintaining the flexibility offered by home working. Subject to that minimum requirement, individuals and managers should work together to find what works best for them and their team.

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.

The range in Leeds is £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 30th August. 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.