Head of Quality

Barclays Payments are hiring a new Director, Head of Quality

The role holder will:

• Define and lead the quality strategy, embedding quality across the full software delivery lifecycle.

• Establish and maintain test engineering best practices, including shift-left testing, automation, and risk-based approaches.

• Provide and evolve test frameworks, tools, and synthetic test data to support scalable, repeatable, and secure testing.

• Manage pre-production environments, ensuring stability, version control, and readiness for integration and performance testing.

• Lead and mentor test engineering leads, fostering a high-performance culture and continuous improvement mindset.

• Drive automation-first testing strategies, integrating with CI/CD pipelines to accelerate delivery and reduce manual effort.

• Ensure quality metrics and reporting are embedded into delivery governance, enabling data-driven decision-making.

• Collaborate with engineering, product, and operations teams to ensure quality is owned and delivered across functions.

• Champion regulatory and compliance-aligned testing, especially in areas like payments, data privacy, and operational resilience.

Purpose of the role

To manage the people, processes and technologies in the IT function to ensure they deliver outcomes that support the goals of the business.  

Accountabilities

• Development and implementation of technology strategies, ensuring technology investments are enablers for business success – i.e. improve efficiency, support growth, innovation, and risk management.
• Strategic leadership to the business on all technology matters, working with subject matter experts across the Group Technology organisation, such as infrastructure, service management and architecture.  .
• Alignment to global data governance frameworks to ensure data quality, security, and privacy, encouraging data-driven decision making by leveraging data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to extract insights and inform business strategies.
• Implementation of technology practices according to security, compliance and regulatory requirements, and is kept current. Implementation of work in accordance with policies and controls and are actively managing risks.  .
• Digital transformation/change projects, programmes and initiatives, modernising legacy systems new and enhanced digital solutions to enable customers, clients and colleagues.   .
• Management of the technology team includes hiring, training, mentoring, and setting and achieving team goals and ensuring that the technology team have the resources and support they need to be successful.
• Management of the technology budgets, ensuring appropriate prioritisation of resources, ensuring investments in technology support overall business goals, and that costs are optimised, and efficiencies are delivered, where required, ensuring financial risks associated with technology are mitigated.

Director Expectations

• 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.