Head of Risk & Controls - Corporate Banking Technology in London

hackajob is collaborating with Barclays to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role.

Core Skills Required

• Enterprise Risk & Control Leadership – Ownership of end‑to‑end risk posture, control frameworks, and control maturity across technology and delivery.
• Regulatory, Audit & Compliance Expertise – Proven ability to manage regulatory expectations, audit readiness, and issue remediation in Tier‑1 banking environments.
• Executive Risk Reporting & Escalation – Strong capability to provide clear, decision‑ready risk reporting, escalation, and mitigation tracking to senior leadership.
• Control Embedding into Delivery – Experience partnering with risk and technology teams to embed controls into delivery processes by design.
• Senior Stakeholder Influence – Trusted engagement with ExCo, auditors, regulators, and cross‑functional leaders in complex, global organisations.

Responsibilities

• Own the Technology Risk & Controls Agenda End‑to‑End – Full accountability for risk posture, control design, and control effectiveness. Set and maintain the control framework, standards, and expectations. Ensure consistency across delivery teams. This is not governance by exception—it is active ownership.
• Provide Executive‑Level Visibility into Risk & Control Maturity – Deliver concise, decision‑ready risk and control reporting. Highlight material risks, emerging issues, and systemic weaknesses. Drive clarity on what matters, why it matters, and what is being done. This responsibility converts data into confidence for senior leadership.
• Ensure Delivery Is “In Control” by Design – Partner with engineering teams to embed controls into ways of working. Shift controls left into planning, build, and change processes. Prevent control failures rather than relying on post‑delivery assurance. This aligns directly with partnering operational risk teams to embed controls into delivery processes.
• Lead Audit, Regulatory, and Compliance Engagement – Act as the primary interface for internal audit, external audit, and regulators. Ensure timely, high‑quality responses to findings and requests. Own remediation plans and track them to sustainable closure. This responsibility protects credibility and avoids last‑minute fire drills.
• Own Risk Escalation, Issue Management & Conflicts of Interest – Define and run escalation protocols for material risks. Maintain disciplined issue management and mitigation tracking. Act as the UKCB Tech Conflicts of Interest (COI) Contact, ensuring transparency and regulatory integrity. This ensures accountability is clear and defensible.

Purpose of the role – To assess the integrity and effectiveness of the banks internal control framework to support the mitigation of risk and protection of the banks operational, financial, and reputational risk.

Accountabilities

• Knowledge of business areas, products, processes and platforms to be able to assess risk.
• Collaboration with various stakeholders across the bank and business units to improve overall control effectiveness through detailed documentation of control assessments, procedures, and findings.
• Identification and investigation of potential weaknesses and issues within internal controls to promote continuous improvement and risk mitigation aligned to the bank’s control framework, prioritised by its severity to disrupt bank operations.
• Development of reports to communicate key findings from risk assessment including control weaknesses and recommendations to control owners, senior management, and other stakeholders.
• Execution of reviews to determine the effectiveness of the bank's internal controls framework aligned to established and evolving policies, regulation, and best practice.
• Implementation of adherence to the Barclays Controls Framework and set appropriate methodology of assessing controls against the Controls Framework.

Director Expectations

• To 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, which may be business wide.
• Manage the direction of a large team or sub-function, leading other people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business.
• Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made outside of own function, offering significant input to function wide strategic initiatives.
• Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub-function.
• Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence.
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations.
• Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.
• Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/ businesses divisions.

All Senior Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others. All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.