Director of Software Engineering- J.P. Morgan Personal Investing in London

Behind every investment is a person with ambitions, motivations and values. While we know that every client is unique, they come to J.P. Morgan Personal Investing for the same reason: our straightforward and transparent approach to investing, and the trust that 150 years of J.P. Morgan heritage brings. J.P. Morgan Personal Investing offers award‑winning investments, products and digital wealth management services to over 275,000 investors in the UK. We built the business with innovation as a core part of our ethos to give consumers the confidence and clarity to make informed investment decisions and achieve their financial goals.

As an Engineer at J.P. Morgan Personal Investing, you will be part of a team with great ambitions. We aim to build a top‑in‑market suite of mobile and web apps to provide the best investment experience for our clients. Our team is at the heart of this venture, focused on getting smart ideas into the hands of our customers. We're looking for people who have a curious mindset, thrive in collaborative squads, and are passionate about building quality software that has a big impact in a rapidly changing environment. By their nature, our people are also solution‑oriented, commercially savvy and have a head for fintech. We work in tribes and squads that focus on specific products and projects.

About the role: J.P. Morgan Personal Investing is expanding its offering with a range of investment products, all built on a common Investment Platform. We are seeking a Director of Engineering to lead one of the Investment Platform areas within JPM Personal Investing, overseeing multiple high‑impact engineering teams. In this role, you will drive execution against the product roadmap while scaling our technology, people, and processes. You will be responsible for shaping technical strategy, building and mentoring high‑performing managers and engineers, and delivering reliable, secure, and scalable systems that support our business goals through innovation.

Job Responsibilities:

• Partner with Product to define and drive the strategy your teams will deliver across multiple time horizons.
• Partner with Business, Marketing and Operations stakeholders and other Engineering leaders to translate strategy into requirements, prioritise roadmaps, remove blockers and ensure on‑time execution of product features to contribute to the company’s business goals.
• Enable cross‑functional alignment within several JPM PI teams through efficient processes, clear communication and effective roadmaps and documentation including decision records.
• Supervise architectural decisions for scalability, reliability, performance and cost efficiency; review and approve major design proposals.
• Promote platform thinking, reuse, and implementation of best practices (e.g., microservices boundaries, data contracts, API standards), while managing technical debt with clear criteria and payoff plans.
• Oversee engineering costs and vendor management in your area, ensuring ROI, compliance and appropriate SLAs.
• Hire, develop and retain top talent, structuring teams for autonomy and clarity. You will own hiring budgets and headcount forecasting in your area.
• Manage, mentor, and grow engineering managers and senior ICs, providing career pathways, constructive feedback, and succession planning.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, personal growth, continuous improvement and operational excellence.
• Own incident management, on‑call strategy and post‑incident reviews to improve reliability and reduce toil.
• Partner with Risk, Compliance and Controls to prepare for and support internal and external audits and deliver solutions in line with the firm’s policies, standards, and regulatory requirements.
• Architect and govern agentic AI‑enabled engineering workflows (using enterprise‑authorised tools within the work environment) to improve delivery speed, code quality, and operational outcomes at scale.
• Apply knowledge of tools within the Software Development Life Cycle toolchain, including enterprise‑authorised AI‑assisted development and automation capabilities, to improve the value realised by automation at scale.

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience as a software engineer plus 10+ years in positions of technical leadership.
• Strong product and business mindset and experience working with high‑profile products in the consumer market.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills across technical and non‑technical audiences in complex domains.
• Strong technical background in modern architectures (distributed systems, cloud‑native, event‑driven architectures), SDLC, and DevOps practices.
• Proven track record leading and scaling agile teams that deliver complex, high‑availability systems at pace.
• Excellent coaching, feedback, and conflict‑resolution skills.
• Demonstrated experience designing and leading adoption of agentic AI‑enabled development practices across teams.
• Strong understanding of responsible AI use and control expectations in engineering workflows.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in FinTech or similar regulated environment where you were exposed to areas like security, compliance or risk management.
• Experience leading cross‑border teams and delivering an international product with different localisations and currencies.
• Experience working with Data systems and data at scale.
• Hands‑on familiarity with AWS, JVM, Kafka and/or relational and NoSQL databases.