Programme Manager: FPS direct scheme participation (contract)

Overview

About Griffin

We’re Griffin! We’re the bank for companies who want to build and launch financial products.

Our context

We’re rapidly heading towards a future where most of us access financial services through technology companies rather than high street banks. All sorts of companies are now embedding financial products into their apps and user journeys so that their customers can seamlessly make payments, manage expenses, take out loans, save, invest, and do more.

The problem is that companies are still dependent on legacy banking infrastructure if they want to offer regulated financial products. They need to either partner directly with an incumbent bank and/or stitch together middleware from various Banking as a Service (BaaS) providers. This process is slow, expensive, and complex and makes it very hard for companies to get new financial products off the ground.

At Griffin, we want to change this.

Our purpose

We want to make it easy for companies to bring finance to their customers at the point of greatest relevance. So, we built a bank. But not just any bank! Griffin is a technology platform and a bank: fully regulated, API-first, developer-centric, and purpose-built to serve innovative fintechs and brands who want to build and embed financial products.

Our culture

Our culture is our most important asset, and one of the ways we safeguard it is by being extremely intentional about hiring the right people. We won’t hire people who don’t seem like a strong fit for our core values, even if they’re otherwise extremely qualified.

We also believe that smart, motivated, conscientious people thrive in high-trust, high-autonomy environments. That’s why we’re transparent by default, and we encourage open discussion and challenge across all levels of the organisation. We’re also remote-first, asynchronous, and fully flexible - because you’re the expert on how and when you do your best work.

The role

We’re about to become a direct participant in the Faster Payments Service (FPS). This is one of our most important infrastructure projects this year. We need someone to own this programme from start to finish. You’ll take us from planning through to going live as a direct participant in 2026. That means coordinating across engineering, treasury, operations, legal, compliance, and our external partners (Pay.UK, Vocalink, Form3, and the Bank of England) to deliver the implementation program on time and on budget.

This is a hands-on role. You’ll be setting the pace, unblocking problems, and keeping everyone, internal and external, aligned on what needs to happen and when.

Who are you

We’re looking for someone who has:

• Managed payment scheme participation (FPS, Bacs, CHAPS or similar) or comparable regulatory infrastructure projects in UK banking
• Delivered technical programmes that cut across engineering, operations, treasury, and compliance, and kept them all moving together
• Worked directly with scheme bodies like Pay.UK, Vocalink, or the Bank of England, and understands their assurance processes, testing requirements, and timelines
• Led delivery in a small team or small firm, where you had to be strategic and hands-on at the same time
• Built strong cross-functional relationships with people who work differently to you, engineers, product managers, lawyers, treasury specialists, and external partners
• Strong fundamentals in resource planning, time management, risk management, and clear communication

We’re remote first, so most of your colleagues won’t be in the same office as you day to day. That means you should be comfortable picking up new tools for collaboration and communication, and you should genuinely enjoy writing. We document everything, and we care a lot about clarity and readability.

Nice to haves

• You’ve done an FPS direct membership implementation before
• You’ve been involved in setting up Bank of England Reserve or Settlement Accounts
• You’re familiar with the FCA and PRA and how they work
• You’ve worked with Form3 or a similar payment gateway provider
• You have experience with sort code management and allocation

What you’ll be doing

You’ll own the full programme to take us from indirect to direct FPS participant. Day to day, that means:

• Running the programme plan from requirements planning and prioritisation through build, testing, assurance, and go-live
• Coordinating all the work streams: technical connectivity (MPLS+, PKI), Form3 gateway configuration, Bank of England settlement access, sort code allocation, and getting our operations ready for 24/7 direct participation
• Spotting and managing risks and dependencies across engineering, treasury, compliance, and our external partners, making sure nothing slips through
• Driving the Pay.UK assurance process, including discovery, non-functional cloud testing, and scheme certification
• Keeping everyone informed with clear, regular updates on progress and milestones - to our leadership team, Board, and external stakeholders
• Maintaining programme governance: decision logs, risk registers, and RAID tracking that people actually find useful
• Managing the programme budget (~£260K in Year 1) and flagging any variances early
• Working closely with external parties, Pay.UK, Vocalink, Form3, BT OpenReach, and our legal advisors, to keep things moving on all sides
• Holding us to the timeline: we have 12 months from letter of intent to go live, and we need someone who’ll keep that pace
• Setting up the handover to BAU, so our operational teams are genuinely ready to run direct FPS participation once we’re live

What can we offer you?

Contract length: 9 - 12 months

Remote-first flexibility - work from anywhere in the UK

As a bank, we’re committed to maintaining the highest standards of security. This means that the successful candidate will need to complete background screening, and our offer will be conditional upon satisfactory review of these checks. This would include verification of right to work, criminal record, credit history, social media and professional reference checks.

How do I apply?

Are we your next move? Apply via the link below, if there’s a match our Talent team will reach out to schedule an initial conversation and talk you through what happens next.

We’re remote-first. We have a small London office in Moorgate, but we are comfortable hiring people to work from anywhere in the UK. About a third of the company is based within occasional commuting distance of London, the rest are full-time remote.

Under representation

Our goal is for Griffin to proportionally represent the diversity of the working population in society. We’re working to ensure that Griffin is a supportive, empowering and inclusive environment for every member of our team - whatever your combination of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical ability, nationality, neurodiversity, and religious beliefs. If you’re part of a group that is under-represented in fintech, we’d love to hear from you.