Senior Sanctions Escalations Manager

As a Senior Sanctions Escalations Manager, you will play a pivotal role in shaping and maintaining Barclays’ sanctions framework. You will act as a central escalation point for complex sanctions queries, providing specialist guidance to internal teams and ensuring alignment with both Barclays’ internal standards and evolving international regulatory expectations. A key part of your role will involve maintaining sanctions policy documentation drafting, reviewing, and refreshing policies to ensure they remain robust, compliant, and fit for purpose.

You will also support governance processes and regulatory reporting, ensuring the bank meets its obligations with precision and integrity.

In this high-profile position, you will support the Head of Sanctions for the Investment Bank Advisory Team by advising on technically complex business initiatives and contributing to the design and effectiveness of the sanctions risk management framework. You will engage with industry bodies, monitor regulatory developments, and help shape responses to changes in the sanctions landscape. Your ability to build partnerships across Compliance, Risk, and Financial Crime teams will be essential, as will your experience in policy development and regulatory interpretation. This is a unique opportunity to influence the strategic direction of sanctions compliance within a global financial institution.

To be successful as a Senior Sanctions Escalations Manager, you should have experience with:

• Sanctions Expertise – experience in sanctions advisory within a large financial institution.

• Policy Development – ability to draft, review, and update regulatory and policy documents.

• Regulatory Knowledge – Deep understanding of UK and international sanctions regimes.

• Experience in regulatory reporting and governance processes.

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills

Your role will be located form our London office.

Purpose of the role

To identify and conduct the appropriate analysis and due diligence on Sanctions alerts to ensure the appropriate action is taken against customers and payment activity as defined by the Sanctions Standards and Restricted Activity Matrix, ensuring that the organisation adheres to all applicable sanction’s laws and regulations and internal governance, such that client accounts are not held and transactions are not processed in breach of application laws and regulations. 

Accountabilities

• Understanding the objectives of the Global Sanctions Function and the control frameworks and embed a culture of compliance with sanctions.
• Revision of escalated cases and confirm a True Match in line with regulations/policy accurately and in a timely manner, feeding back on instances of incorrect escalation.
• Management and provision of guidance in the completion of complex sanctions investigations, ensuring that matters are correctly managed and follow appropriate escalation routes, while involving the relevant stakeholders early and fully.
• Due diligence on Payment Screening alerts to determine the appropriate treatment and next steps for the payment in line with documented procedures following the defined governance process and approvals as required.
• Escalation of Customer Screening True Matches to appropriate Business Aligned Sanctions Team for assessment.
• Identification of opportunities to drive efficiencies in the alert management process and feed these back to the appropriate team(s) to implement.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures..
• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements..
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People 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..
• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

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.