Head of Governance & Management System - BPL

Barclays is collaborating with professional recruiters to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role. The Head of Governance ensures follow‑through and escalation where required. Coordinate across functions to ensure risks, issues and decisions are surfaced early, triaged correctly and resolved at the right level. Manage sensitive, high‑trust CEO office matters with discretion, judgement and control discipline. Deliver a high‑quality, service‑led CEO office, providing senior leadership ready materials that enable the CEO and ELT to operate effectively and support the management of critical stakeholders.

Essential Skills / Basic Qualifications

• Experience supporting Board and Board Committees (or equivalent regulated governance forums).
• Experience in payment acquiring, fintech, digital banking or platform‑led businesses.
• Experience standing up a new office/PMO/governance function (operating model, roles, templates, playbooks).
• Familiarity with performance management and MI design (KPIs/OKRs, balanced scorecards, dashboards).
• Experience leading a small team and managing through influence across a matrix.
• Significant experience running a senior executive office, secretariat, governance or COO‑style function in a complex organisation.
• Strong capability operating management systems (forums, cadence, packs, action/decision tracking, escalation paths).
• Proven ability to produce and quality‑control board/ExCo‑ready papers, agendas, minutes and decision logs with high accuracy.
• Outstanding organisation, prioritisation and follow‑through including action discipline, risk/issue tracking.
• Excellent stakeholder management with confidence operating with CEO/ELT‑level counterparts; able to challenge appropriately.
• High standards of judgement, confidentiality and discretion.
• Strong written communication: crisp synthesis, clear narrative, decision‑focused documents.

Director Expectations

• Manage a business function, providing significant input to function‑wide strategic initiatives.
• Contribute to and influence policy and procedures for the function and plan, manage and consult on multiple complex and critical strategic projects.
• Manage the direction of a large team or sub‑function, leading people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business.
• Act as a deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross‑functionally; provide coaching to less‑experienced specialists.
• Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made outside of own function.
• Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub‑function.
• Escalate breaches of policies or procedures appropriately.
• Foster and guide compliance, ensuring relevant regulations are observed and processes are in place to facilitate adherence.
• Focus on the external environment, regulators or advocacy groups to monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays where appropriate.
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division and contributes to overall business objectives.
• Maintain comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline and up‑to‑date sector knowledge, with insight into external market developments.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex or sensitive situations.
• Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic recommendations within own area.
• Negotiate and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.
• Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions or business divisions.
• Serve as a spokesperson for the function and business division.