Application Engineering Lead Engineer - E4 in Swindon

A fantastic and rare opportunity to lead our Application Engineering function within Payments CIO as an Application Engineering Lead Engineer. The team is responsible for developing, enhancing and supporting a platinum business service payments system, built on cloud-based services and containerised Java microservices. This is a critical payments system which is core to our members’ banking needs.

In this pivotal role you will lead a large application engineering capability of up to 60 Java developers, taking responsibility for day-to-day engineering delivery across mission-critical payments services. Focusing on delivery, quality and service resilience, you will foster a proactive engineering culture and ensure the solutions delivered by the team are of the highest standard. You will be considered a technical SME and engineering leader with deep experience in Java application engineering, microservices, CI/CD automation, AI-enabled engineering practices and modern software delivery, using your skills and experience to mentor, guide and develop engineers across the team.

You will represent the application engineering team with senior stakeholders across the Society, ensuring engineering decisions consider the wider organisational context and support the strategic direction of Payments technology. You are tasked with leading the team to ensure the applications being delivered are resilient, secure, performant and aligned to organisational guardrails, while ensuring cost, efficiency and maintainability are considered throughout the engineering lifecycle. You’ll be at the frontline, delivering our vision to our members by building, improving, and maintaining a system used to process millions of transactions every day. You’ll be given the opportunity to work with the most up-to-date technologies to deliver real change.

We are happy to consider flexible working approaches to help you perform at your best. At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected. For this job you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, based at either our Swindon or London office.

If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here. Nationwide is committed to the redeployment of our employees impacted by change, as such applications for redeployment candidates will be prioritised in this recruitment process. If you’re a colleague on long-term absence (for example, on parental leave) or a temporary worker, please use your personal email address to submit an application.

Responsibilities

We need an accomplished technical leader, comfortable working across teams that follow both waterfall and agile delivery frameworks. This will involve leading a team of up to 60 Java developers day to day as part of the programme leadership team. You will work with a diverse set of stakeholders across the Society, from Product Owners, Senior Technology Architects, Technical SMEs and delivery leads through to the CIO. You will plan and deliver the application engineering outcomes required to support mission-critical payments services for Nationwide members.

You will be well versed in modern Java engineering, microservice architectures, CI/CD automation, DevSecOps practices, AI-enabled engineering productivity, observability and monitoring, and will use these capabilities to support effective decision making. You will help identify the impact of vendor roadmaps, automation opportunities, emerging AI capabilities and industry trends on the Payments application landscape and ensure that the IT strategy and architecture continues to support CIO priorities. You will lead the design, build, deployment and support of Java-based applications and services within the Electronic Payments Hub and wider Payments Modernisation programme. You will provide education, advice and guidance to internal engineers and third-party suppliers to support a high change cadence, strong engineering standards, CI/CD automation, effective use of AI-assisted engineering practices and quality outcomes.

About you

We are looking for an Application Engineering Lead Engineer with strong application engineering experience and a proven track record of leading large, high-performing software engineering teams. You’ll have experience of working in a pressured environment, strong delivery ownership and the leadership skills needed to guide, motivate and develop a team of up to 60 developers, while driving CI/CD automation, engineering efficiency and the responsible adoption of AI-enabled delivery practices.

We need someone with expertise including:

• High levels of technical leadership, organisational capability and experience leading large Java engineering teams.
• Proven stakeholder management skills with excellent verbal and written communication including a capability to break down technical content into understandable language.
• Experience of leading design work and reviewing designs as a member of a technical design authority.
• Experience setting engineering direction, standards and delivery practices across multiple squads or delivery teams.
• Technical understanding of Java, Spring Boot, microservices, APIs, cloud-native application patterns, AWS and/or Azure, MongoDB and Kafka.
• A broad understanding of engineering tooling including Jenkins, GitHub, Artifactory, Harness, Atlassian Jira and Confluence, SonarQube and Dynatrace.
• Leadership experience in CI/CD automation, release orchestration and engineering productivity improvements across large software engineering teams.
• Experience identifying and applying AI-enabled engineering practices to improve developer productivity, software quality, automation and operational insight.
• Good understanding of microservice architectures, event-driven architectures, engineering guardrails and secure software delivery practices.
• Great mentoring skills with the ability to inspire other engineers.
• Proven thought leadership to influence the strategy for engineering to challenge and inform the approach for solutions.

Our customer first behaviours put customers and members at the heart of how we work together. They are the set of behaviours that every colleague needs to display, in every role:

• Feel what customers feel - We step into our customers’ shoes, using their feedback and insights to empathise with them and to understand their needs, so that every decision we make starts and finishes with our customers in mind.
• Say it straight - We are brave in speaking out and saying what we think – we’re honest and direct with good intent, openly sharing diverse perspectives to reach the best conclusions and using language everyone can understand.
• Push for better - We don’t settle for mediocrity, we challenge the status quo, taking responsibility for continuous improvement and personal development.
• Get it done - We prioritise what will have the greatest impact, we are decisive, and we take accountability for delivering brilliant customer outcomes.

You can strengthen your application by showing how our customer first behaviours resonate with you, and where you may have already demonstrated these.

Qualifications

The extras you’ll get:

• 30 days holiday, pro rata
• Private medical insurance
• A highly competitive pension to help you build a strong foundation for retirement
• Access to an annual performance-related bonus
• Training and development to help you progress your career
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Life assurance to provide peace of mind for you and your loved ones in the event of your death
• Wellhub – access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year

Banking – but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society. We forge our own path at Nationwide. As a mutual, we’re owned by our members - those customers who bank, save or have a mortgage with us. We challenge the financial sector status quo. We don’t see customers as the engine of our own profit. We share our profits with them and put their needs first. Always there when they need us. Supporting them and their lives. If you’re inspired by fairer finances, passionate about making a meaningful impact, and truly care about our customers, you’re one of us. At Nationwide, you are challenged to grow and rewarded for doing so. Valued. Recognised. Inspired to be your best. As a community, we want our working lives to count. As a team, we celebrate what we achieve. As a standard-setter, we work for the good of customers, communities, and broader society. We are purpose-driven. Uncompromisingly customer. Unstoppably Nationwide.

What to do next

If this role is for you, please click the ‘Apply Now’ button. You’ll need to attach your up-to-date CV and answer a few quick questions for us. We respond to everyone, so we will be in contact shortly after the closing date to let you know the outcome of your application.

The hiring manager for this role is Mark Gibbins, and the main recruitment contact is Nathan Richens. Please note that should you be successful in securing this role, the job title on our internal systems will be Engineer E4.