Finance & Treasury Reference and Master Data Programme Director

To establish a controlled, standardised, and enterprise-scale data foundation across Finance & Treasury, Barclays is seeking an exceptional Programme Director to lead the strategy, design, governance, sourcing, and adoption of enterprise reference and master data capabilities. This is a critical leadership role at the forefront of a major transformation agenda, addressing a highly fragmented data landscape that currently creates significant operational, regulatory, reporting, and decision-making challenges across the organisation.

The Programme Director will define and drive the end-to-end Finance & Treasury data strategy, partnering across business and technology functions to deliver a trusted, authoritative, and scalable data ecosystem. Working in close alignment with the EDP and Catalyst Platform Transformation initiatives, the successful candidate will lead enterprise-wide requirements definition, governance frameworks, and delivery execution across both existing and emerging programmes.

This role will be instrumental in creating a clean, comprehensive, and strategically aligned Finance & Treasury data estate, ensuring referential integrity across interconnected data products and providing the foundation for accurate accounting, financial calculations, regulatory compliance, workflow optimisation, risk management, and management reporting. The successful candidate will influence senior stakeholders across the organisation, shape long-term data strategy, and deliver transformational outcomes that enhance Barclays’ operational resilience, control environment, and business performance.

Purpose of the role

Responsible for broader, strategic objectives across multiple projects, with a long-term, cross-functional focus.

Accountabilities

• Scope Management: Oversees a collection of related projects that together aim to achieve broader strategic business objectives. Their focus is on the long-term benefits and ensuring the alignment of projects with the organization’s goals.
• Strategic Focus: Focuses on strategic, high-level outcomes. They are responsible for the overall success and continuous alignment of projects to the organization’s business strategy.
• Time Horizon: Typically works over a longer time horizon, as programs may span months or years and involve multiple phases and projects.
• Stakeholder Management: Manages a wide range of stakeholders across various projects, including executives, project managers, and external clients. They ensure communication and alignment across all projects within the program.
• Risk and Issue Management: Manages risks and issues at a higher level, focusing on cross-project dependencies and potential impacts on the broader program or business strategy..
• Resource Management: Responsible for allocating resources across multiple projects, balancing priorities, and ensuring that resources are used efficiently across the program.
• Financial Management: Manages the overall program budget, tracking the financial health of multiple projects and ensuring that the program as a whole delivers value.
• Metrics: Measures success based on the cumulative benefits delivered by all the projects within the program. They look at business outcomes, value creation, and alignment with strategic goals.
• Change Management: Deals with change at a macro level, ensuring that changes across projects are managed cohesively and don’t negatively impact the overall program.

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..
• They 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. Or for an individual contributor, they lead organisation wide projects and act as deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross functionally. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• 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.
• Escalates breaches of policies / procedure appropriately.
• Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence.
• Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate.
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives.
• Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up-to-date relevant sector / functional knowledge, and insight into external market developments / initiatives.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations.
• Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or recommendations within own area.
• 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.
• Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.

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.