Swapclear & Listed Rates Transformation Lead

LCH Ltd is a leading global central counterparty clearing house (CCP) and part of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). LCH plays a critical role in global financial markets by mitigating counterparty risk across multiple asset classes, serving a broad ecosystem of exchanges, trading venues and over‑the‑counter markets. Its clients include the majority of the world’s major investment banks, broker‑dealers, asset managers, and other institutional market participants. As a CCP of systemic importance, LCH sits at the centre of financial transactions and applies rigorous risk management, collateralisation, and margining practices to ensure market integrity and stability.

About SwapClear: SwapClear is the global market leader in clearing OTC interest rate derivatives. It clears over 10 million trades, with total notional exceeding $1.8 quadrillion a year and remains the deepest and most liquid CCP for interest rate swaps globally. The platform supports over 100 clearing members and a global client base, providing advanced post‑trade services including margin optimisation, compression, and portfolio risk management capabilities.

The Role: We are seeking a senior technology leader to drive key elements of the transformation of the SwapClear platform and its delivery model. The transformation objective is to improve the flow of value, engineering productivity, platform resilience, and scalability, ensuring technology enables both the protection and growth of the business. The position reports to the Head of SwapClear Engineering. The successful candidate will bring deep engineering expertise, a strong advocate for modern engineering practices, and the ability to operate effectively at both strategic and execution levels. They will work in close partnership with business leadership, as well as cross‑functional teams spanning engineering, product, data, and operations, to contribute to and deliver a multi‑year transformation agenda.

Key Responsibilities Of The Role:

• Partner with Product to define and execute roadmaps aligned to business outcomes, ensuring clear objectives, measurable KPIs, and a strong focus on platform simplification and modernisation.
• Ensure all delivery aligns to SwapClear and LCH target‑state architecture, engineering principles, standards and best practices.
• Evolve the delivery operating model in partnership with engineering and Product to improve flow of value, enabling high‑quality, responsive delivery through scalable, autonomous teams operating in a high‑trust environment.
• Produce and present high quality plans/roadmaps and strategy communications for senior stakeholders up to Board level.
• Drive measurable improvements in engineering performance (e.g. lead time, deployment frequency, change failure rate, service resilience), embedding a data‑driven approach to delivery effectiveness.
• Lead delivery of the SwapClear cloud migration and broader platform modernisation, ensuring scalability, resilience and operational efficiency.
• Ensure all transformation initiatives enhance platform resilience, recoverability and operational stability, aligned to regulatory expectations for systemically important financial market infrastructure.
• Work with product and engineering functions to ensure delivery teams are properly resourced and roles and responsibilities are clear and understood.
• Align technology delivery with the strategic priorities of SwapClear, LCH and LSEG, working closely with senior stakeholders across technology, product and business functions.
• Champion adoption of AI‑augmented engineering practices across the SDLC to improve developer productivity, code quality and delivery speed, ensuring appropriate controls, auditability and risk management.
• Manage cross‑platform dependencies and sequencing across multiple programmes, ensuring coordinated delivery across highly interconnected systems.
• Drive cost‑effective delivery, ensuring clear alignment between technology investment, resource utilisation and business value.

Leadership and Stakeholder Management:

• Inspiring and credible leader with strong communication and relationship‑building skills, able to align diverse stakeholders across engineering, product, operations and business functions.
• Highly effective communicator and presenter, capable of engaging and influencing senior stakeholders including C‑suite, regulators and external industry forums.
• Proven ability to lead and deliver complex, multi‑year transformation programmes across global, highly regulated organisations.
• Operates with gravitas, integrity and sound judgement, providing clear direction, challenge and counsel at all levels of the organisation.
• Strong strategic thinker with high intellectual rigour and analytical capability, able to translate business priorities into executable delivery strategies.
• Demonstrated track record of building, developing and leading high‑performing teams, including developing leadership capability and engineering talent.
• Proven experience in driving organisational and process transformation, including re‑engineering delivery models to improve quality, speed and cost efficiency.
• Ability to balance innovation and pace with operational stability, enabling rapid delivery of new capabilities while maintaining the integrity of critical platforms.
• Proven capability in simplifying complex technology estates, reducing technical debt and driving long‑term maintainability and scalability.
• Strong external orientation, maintaining awareness of industry trends and emerging practices across areas such as cloud, data, and distributed technologies, and applying these judiciously within a regulated environment.
• Deep understanding of modern delivery and planning practices, including continuous planning, incremental commitment and managing delivery through the "cone of uncertainty".
• Able to drive planning maturity across teams, improving predictability, transparency, and adaptability in complex delivery environments.

Technology & Delivery Expertise:

• Proven technologist with a strong hands‑on engineering background, leading large‑scale technology teams, ideally within Rates, FX, Credit or Clearing in an investment bank or equivalent financial services organisation.
• Demonstrated track record of leading and operating business‑critical platforms at scale, across complex, highly available environments.
• Strong experience across hybrid technology estates, with practical knowledge of both on‑premise and cloud environments.
• Deep experience of modern software development lifecycle (SDLC) practices, including Agile methodologies, applied effectively within large‑scale, complex systems.
• Proven ability to improve engineering delivery and quality through standardisation, automation and the adoption of modern tooling and practices.
• Demonstrated capability to drive technical innovation within the constraints of a highly regulated, business‑critical environment, balancing change with stability and control.
• Understanding of cyber security principles and practices, ensuring security is embedded within delivery and operational processes.
• Strong appreciation of how AI can augment the software development lifecycle, with demonstrated interest in applying AI‑enabled tooling to improve engineering productivity, code quality and delivery effectiveness within a controlled, regulated environment.

Desirable Business & Domain Expertise:

• Background in financial markets, with exposure to pricing, trading, risk management and/or post‑trade processes across derivatives or other financial products.
• Ability to operate as a technology leader who contributes to broader business outcomes, aligning technology delivery to client needs, business value and growth objectives.
• Awareness of systemic risk and the role of central clearing in supporting market stability.
• Experience in, or exposure to, central counterparty (CCP) environments or related domains such as Rates, Risk or Market Infrastructure would be advantageous.

We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, veteran status, pregnancy or disability, or any other basis protected under applicable law. We can reasonably accommodate applicants’ and employees’ religious practices and beliefs, as well as mental health or physical disability needs.