Head of Platform Engineering in London

Information Technology has a global footprint operating across London, Asia (Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Beijing), Dubai and New York. IT comprises of 5 core areas namely Global Markets IT (FICE & Commodities/Operations/Market Services Technology), Global Production Services, Business Management, Control IT/ Tech Risk IT and Finance and Risk IT.

The Head of Infrastructure Engineering & Solution Design is responsible for defining and leading the bank's infrastructure engineering strategy across the on-premises technology estate. The role provides strategic leadership for infrastructure engineering, infrastructure solution design, engineering governance, automation and operational resilience, ensuring infrastructure services are secure, scalable, stable and efficient.

The postholder will lead the design and continuous improvement of infrastructure capabilities that support application delivery, environment consistency, operational reliability and effective service management. The role is accountable for establishing robust controls and guardrails across the end-to-end infrastructure delivery lifecycle, ensuring infrastructure and application changes are governed, traceable and aligned with the bank's architectural, security and operational standards.

A key purpose of the role is to embed automation as a principle across infrastructure design and delivery. Infrastructure as Code shall be adopted where technically appropriate for the on-premises estate. All infrastructure solution designs must demonstrate compliance with engineering standards, automation expectations, security requirements and operational supportability before design approval is granted.

The postholder will work closely with engineering, architecture, security, operations, and service management teams to ensure that infrastructure services support both innovation and operational resilience. The role will also contribute to broader technology transformation initiatives across the bank, helping to simplify delivery, improve reliability, and enhance the overall engineering and operational experience.

As a senior technology leader, the postholder will foster a culture of engineering excellence, ownership, discipline, continuous improvement and accountability, while providing leadership and coaching to infrastructure engineering and associated technology teams.

What you’ll be doing

• Lead infrastructure engineering strategy and execution: Define and deliver the strategic roadmap for infrastructure engineering, ensuring alignment with business priorities, technology standards and enterprise architecture.
• Own infrastructure solution design and governance: Establish and operate infrastructure solution design governance, ensuring proposed solutions are secure, resilient, supportable and compliant with bank standards before implementation.
• Establish and maintain infrastructure engineering standards: Define and enforce infrastructure standards, engineering patterns, environment principles and lifecycle management practices to ensure consistency, resilience and control across the bank.
• Drive infrastructure automation and repeatability: Champion automation-first practices across provisioning, configuration, deployment, monitoring, patching, recovery and operational support activities to reduce manual effort and improve quality.
• Embed Infrastructure as Code where appropriate: Promote IaC for on-premises infrastructure where technically feasible, ensuring configurations are version controlled, peer reviewed, repeatable and auditable.
• Own infrastructure delivery controls and guardrails: Design and implement controlled delivery processes including approvals, validation gates, segregation of duties, release controls and auditability across the delivery lifecycle.
• Strengthen operational resilience and service stability: Ensure infrastructure services are reliable, secure, recoverable and scalable, with strong monitoring, alerting, incident response and disaster recovery practices.
• Improve environment consistency and deployment reliability: Standardise development, test, UAT and production infrastructure environments to reduce configuration drift, improve release confidence and support predictable deployments.
• Support modern hosting and deployment approaches: Enable scalable, efficient and supportable hosting models that align with operational, security and regulatory requirements in an on-premises environment.
• Collaborate across functions and influence stakeholders: Work closely with engineering, architecture, security, operations, service management and delivery teams to ensure infrastructure services and capabilities meet business and technical needs.
• Monitor performance and drive continuous improvement: Define and track key performance indicators for infrastructure health, availability, delivery efficiency, service quality, risk reduction and engineering productivity.
• Lead and develop high-performing teams: Build and mentor infrastructure engineering teams, fostering a collaborative, disciplined and high-performing engineering culture.
• Stay ahead of emerging technologies and industry practices: Evaluate infrastructure, automation, operational tooling and engineering practices that can enhance resilience, efficiency and long-term sustainability across the bank.

What you’ll need to be successful

• Proven leadership experience in Infrastructure design and engineering, or site reliability engineering, ideally within complex or large-scale environments.
• Strong strategic thinking and vision, with the ability to translate business goals into technical roadmaps and platform capabilities.
• Deep technical expertise across infrastructure management, automation, CI/CD, observability, and security practices, with a pragmatic approach to implementation.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, capable of engaging effectively with technical teams, senior leadership, and cross-functional partners.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and inspire multidisciplinary teams, fostering a culture of collaboration, accountability and continuous improvement.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills, with a track record of navigating ambiguity and delivering outcomes under pressure.
• Commitment to operational excellence, including reliability, performance, cost optimisation and compliance.
• TOGAF Foundation or Certified.
• Proficiency in automation and orchestration tools, such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef, or similar, with hands-on experience implementing infrastructure as code (IaC).
• Expertise in CI/CD tooling and practices, including pipeline design, automated testing, release management, and rollback strategies. Familiarity with tools such as Jenkins, TeamCity, GitLab CI, or equivalent.
• Solid grasp of observability and monitoring frameworks, including metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting.
• Comfortable working in both strategic and hands-on capacities, able to shift between high-level planning and detailed technical oversight.
• Experience managing vendor relationships, evaluating tools and negotiating contracts to support platform goals.
• A continuous learner, staying up to date with industry trends, emerging technologies and evolving best practices.

Why should you join us?

ICBC Standard Bank Plc (ICBCS) is a leading financial markets and commodities bank, driven to deliver the right outcomes for our stakeholders, clients, counterparties and markets. We benefit from a unique Chinese and African parentage and an unrivalled global network and expertise. We’re headquartered in London, with operations in Shanghai, Singapore and New York.

We’re a diverse and close-knit global team. We put people first, giving talented, self-driven professionals the flexibility, rewards and freedom to grow their expertise and realise their potential. Our vision statement, “Be Yourself, Succeed Together” underpins our drive for an open and transparent culture which values difference, enabling everyone to thrive whilst being themselves. We have an active E, D&I forum and we’re growing other employee network groups, including for women and neurodiversity.

We’re committed to the principle of equal opportunities. All applicants will be treated equally and will be considered on their merits and skills without discrimination.

What’s in it for you?

• Financial – market-based pay based on skills and experience, discretionary annual bonus, pension contribution 10% (employee contribution 5%), travel insurance, life assurance and income replacement insurance.
• Hybrid working – the option to work remotely up to two days per week, depending on the role.
• Family - 6 months maternity leave at full pay, 4 weeks paternity leave at full pay and enhanced shared parental leave pay. Coaching for family leave returners and access to emergency care via My Family Care. Paid fertility and miscarriage leave.
• Wellbeing - private medical insurance, Bike2Work scheme, health and fitness subsidy, holiday exchange, Employee Assistance Programme and menopause policy.
• Community – paid volunteering leave and Give As You Earn scheme. Vibrant CSR and engagement forums and fundraising for our charity partners.
• Development – a suite of opportunities to build the skills you need to excel in your role.