Staff Software Engineer - Barclaycard Payments

A fantastic opportunity to join us as we create a standalone Payments Acquiring business embracing a fintech culture from our new London offices alongside our Brookfield partners.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you’ll play a key role in improving how we build, deploy and run software. You’ll lead technical delivery, support and guide other engineers, and help establish practical standards that make development simpler and more reliable.

Barclays’ payments acceptance business supports a wide range of UK businesses, processing billions in transactions each year. This is a chance to join at an important stage, where you’ll contribute to how the platform evolves and how engineering works day to day.

To be successful as a Staff Software Engineer you should have experience with;

• Deep expertise in backend engineering and building large-scale distributed systems within a cloud environment preferably AWS (Azure, GCP also suitable)
• Expert level mastery of Java or Kotlin, Scala, or similar JVM language
• Data Layer Expertise – Experience with both SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis) databases, understanding when to use each

Some other highly valued skills may include;

• Proven experience working with AI Technologies or machine learning integration
• FinTech, Payments, scaling Tech or start-up domain experience
• Rust – Experience with systems programming and performance-critical services
• Kubernetes – Container orchestration experience with K8s, Helm, and cloud-native deployment strategies
• React – Modern frontend development skills with React, TypeScript, and state management libraries
• Observability – Experience with monitoring, logging, and tracing tools 
• CI/CD Wizardry – Extensive DevOps mindset with experience in automated deployment pipelines, infrastructure as code, and GitOps practices
• Messaging & Events – Solid grasp of messaging technologies (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, NATS) and event-driven architecture patterns
• API Design – Proven track record designing and implementing RESTful and/or GraphQL APIs that scale

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.

The successful candidate will be based in London. Our offices are located at 1 Churchill Place and 7 Westferry Circus (new BPL office).

We support a hybrid working pattern with 3 days per week office-based presence expected. Our team operate an on-call rota and so weekend and evening working may be required on occasion.

Barclays’ payments acceptance business provides critical infrastructure to the UK economy, processing billions of pounds of payments annually for both small businesses and domestic and international corporate clients.

In April 2025, we announced a long-term partnership with Brookfield Asset Management to grow and transform the payments acceptance business by broadening the range of services offered, enhancing the experience for both existing and prospective clients. Leveraging extensive client relationships and deep experience of UK payments, we will create an environment of continuous innovation - activated by Brookfield’s global private equity expertise in payments, technology, operational transformation and corporate carve-outs - to ensure the business is strategically positioned for long-term growth.

Barclays will invest approximately £400m in the new business, the majority of which will be incurred during the first three years. Performance-linked incentives will drive greater alignment between the partners, underpinning the long-term commitment to the transformation. Barclays and Brookfield will work to create a standalone entity over time, continuing to use the Barclaycard Payments (BPL) brand and acting as the sole payments acceptance services provider to Barclays’ clients for a minimum of ten years. 

For more information on our partnership with Brookfield, please visit Barclays.com.

Purpose of the role

To design, develop and improve software, utilising various engineering methodologies, that provides business, platform, and technology capabilities for our customers and colleagues. 

Accountabilities

• Development and delivery of high-quality software solutions by using industry aligned programming languages, frameworks, and tools. Ensuring that code is scalable, maintainable, and optimized for performance.
• Cross-functional collaboration with product managers, designers, and other engineers to define software requirements, devise solution strategies, and ensure seamless integration and alignment with business objectives.
• Collaboration with peers, participate in code reviews, and promote a culture of code quality and knowledge sharing.
• Stay informed of industry technology trends and innovations and actively contribute to the organization’s technology communities to foster a culture of technical excellence and growth.
• Adherence to secure coding practices to mitigate vulnerabilities, protect sensitive data, and ensure secure software solutions.
• Implementation of effective unit testing practices to ensure proper code design, readability, and reliability.

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.