Director - Software Engineering in London

Work Location Options: Hybrid

At American Express, our culture is built on a 175-year history of innovation, shared values and Leadership Behaviors, and an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities, and colleagues. As part of Team Amex, you'll experience this powerful backing with comprehensive support for your holistic well-being and many opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career.

Here, your voice and ideas matter, your work makes an impact, and together, you will help us define the future of American Express.

We’re looking for a Director, Software Engineering to lead the delivery of a critical, distributed Accounts Receivable platform supporting multiple global markets. This role exists to own outcomes: scaling teams, strengthening execution, and ensuring we successfully migrate markets from legacy mainframe systems to a modern, event-driven platform. In addition, the role offers the opportunity to collaborate closely with peers and senior leaders to help shape the future technical direction and engineering culture of a large, fast-paced organisation committed to modern software development practices and building high-performing teams.

This is a leadership role for an experienced engineering leader with strong software engineering principles. You will be closely involved in shaping how teams work and how the platform evolves—advocating for clear domain ownership, sound technical practices, and sustainable delivery. You’ll stay close to the work through design reviews and technical discussions, bringing expert-level software engineering experience and the ability to read, understand, and reason about production code.

You’ll partner closely with Product, Program Management, Architecture, and senior stakeholders to turn long-running transformation goals into clear priorities, predictable delivery, and meaningful business impact.

How will you make an impact in this role?

• Owning Delivery and Outcomes
  • Lead three cross-functional engineering teams delivering a distributed, Java-based, event-sourced and event-driven platform used across multiple markets.
  • Own delivery for major platform initiatives, including migration onto the new platform.
  • Translate strategic goals into clear execution plans, milestones, and measurable outcomes, adjusting scope and sequencing as needed.
  • Ensure delivery is predictable and sustainable, balancing speed, quality, resilience, and operational excellence.
  • Act as an escalation point when delivery is at risk—removing impediments, aligning stakeholders, and making pragmatic trade-offs.
• Leading with Strong Engineering Principles
  • Champion Domain-Driven Design, ensuring domain boundaries, ownership, and language are clear and aligned with the business.
  • Apply Lean and Agile software engineering principles to improve flow, reduce waste, and enable teams to deliver value continuously.
  • Advocate for platform needs—technical health, resilience, and long-term evolution—in collaboration with Product and Program Management.
  • Support teams in making informed decisions that balance near-term delivery with long-term platform sustainability.
• Leading and Growing People
  • Build, coach, and retain high-performing engineering teams, with a strong focus on engagement, clarity, and psychological safety.
  • Develop Engineering Managers and senior engineers through regular feedback, coaching, and career development.
  • Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement.
  • Ensure teams are structured and staffed to meet both current delivery commitments and future platform needs.
• Providing Pragmatic Technical Leadership
  • Bring strong technical judgment to guide teams through complex delivery and design decisions in distributed, event-driven systems.
  • Partner with Architects and senior engineers to evolve the platform through collaborative design, review, and iteration.
  • Stay close enough to the work to ask the right questions, review critical designs, and unblock teams when needed.
  • Ensure high standards for quality, testing, observability, and operational readiness in a cloud-native environment.
• Partnering Across the Organisation
  • Work closely with Product and Program Management to align priorities, scope, and sequencing—ensuring engineering effort maps clearly to business outcomes.
  • Collaborate with platform, operations, and enabling teams to deliver consistently at scale across markets.
  • Communicate clearly with senior stakeholders, providing transparency on progress, risks, dependencies, and trade-offs.

Minimum Qualifications

• Proven experience as an Engineering Director or senior Engineering Manager leading multiple teams (roughly 15–30 engineers).
• Expert-level software engineering background, with deep prior experience designing, building, and operating complex systems at scale.
• Strong grounding in Domain-Driven Design, Lean, and Agile software engineering principles, applied in real-world, complex environments.
• A track record of owning delivery outcomes for large, multi-team initiatives.
• Experience building and operating distributed, event-driven or event-sourced systems, ideally in Java-based ecosystems.
• Demonstrated ability to advocate effectively for teams and platform requirements in cross-functional forums.
• Strong people leadership skills, including coaching Engineering Managers and developing senior engineers.
• Experience partnering closely with Product and Program Management to balance delivery, scope, and technical health.
• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience migrating systems off mainframe or other legacy platforms.
• Familiarity with Domain-Driven Design at scale and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience working in large, global organisations with multi-market or regulated environments.
• Background in financial services or other high-reliability domains.

Why This Role Is Interesting

• Meaningful platform impact: Lead teams delivering a core financial platform supporting multiple global markets.
• Clear Director-level scope: Hands-on accountability for people, delivery, and engineering standards.
• Principles-led leadership: Opportunity to apply DDD, Lean, and Agile practices where they genuinely shape outcomes.
• Complex, real-world problems: Long-running platform modernisation with real constraints, dependencies, and trade-offs.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with Product, Program Management, and Architecture to deliver outcomes—not just output.

Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the UK is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.

Benefits

We back you with benefits that support your holistic well-being so you can be and deliver your best. This means caring for you and your loved ones' physical, financial, and mental health, as well as providing the flexibility you need to thrive personally and professionally:

• Competitive base salaries
• Bonus incentives
• Support for financial-well-being and retirement
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability benefits (depending on location)
• Flexible working model with hybrid, onsite or virtual arrangements depending on role and business need
• Generous paid parental leave policies (depending on your location)
• Free access to global on-site wellness centers staffed with nurses and doctors (depending on location)
• Free and confidential counseling support through our Healthy Minds program
• Career development and training opportunities

Offer of employment with American Express is conditioned upon the successful completion of a background verification check, subject to applicable laws and regulations.