Senior Digital Accessibility Consultant (12 month maternity leave cover)

Join us as a Senior Digital Accessibility Consultant (12-month maternity leave cover), supporting BUK secure digital channels to monitor and improve accessibility across priority customer and colleague journeys, and to reduce accessibility risk.

You’ll act as a senior partner to Product Owners and delivery leads, helping teams build accessibility ownership, embed appropriate controls, and evidence compliance through risk and governance frameworks. You’ll coordinate reporting, assurance activity, and supplier engagement so improvements are delivered at pace and risks are managed appropriately, in line with existing and emerging regulations.

You will lead accessibility governance, risk management, and business engagement across BUK secure channels during a 12-month maternity leave cover, ensuring accessibility risks are understood, owned, and managed through effective controls, reporting, assurance, and supplier ways of working. The role will drive measurable improvements in digital accessibility health, enable Product Owners to take accountability, and use insight (including complaints and NPS) to prioritise action that reduces customer harm for vulnerable customers.

To be successful as a Senior Digital Accessibility Consultant you should have experience with;

• Strong Product Owner / digital delivery leadership experience, with the ability to shape priorities, run effective governance, and drive outcomes across complex stakeholder groups
• Proven risk, controls and governance experience in a regulated environment, with confidence in identifying, recording and escalating issues through formal risk processes
• Working knowledge of digital accessibility (for example, what WCAG is, common accessibility risks, and how to interpret evidence from testing/audit), with the ability to translate this into clear actions for Product and suppliers

Some other highly valued skills may include;

• Practical experience of coordinating accessibility assurance (testing and audit), tracking remediation, and using results to improve accessibility health and reporting
• Experience engaging third parties on accessibility expectations and evidence, including supplier assurance against agreed controls and escalation routes for higher-risk issues
• Strong familiarity with accessibility in secure/authenticated customer journeys and using customer insight (complaints, NPS or similar) to evidence harm and prioritise improvements

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.

Location of this role will be Northampton or Knutsford 

Purpose of the role

To design, develop, and execute testing strategies to validate functionality, performance, and user experience, while collaborating with cross-functional teams to identify and resolve defects, and continuously improve testing processes and methodologies, to ensure software quality and reliability. 

Accountabilities

• Development and implementation of comprehensive test plans and strategies to validate software functionality and ensure compliance with established quality standards.
• Creation and execution automated test scripts, leveraging testing frameworks and tools to facilitate early detection of defects and quality issues.         .
• Collaboration with cross-functional teams to analyse requirements, participate in design discussions, and contribute to the development of acceptance criteria, ensuring a thorough understanding of the software being tested.
• Root cause analysis for identified defects, working closely with developers to provide detailed information and support defect resolution.
• 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.

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.