AI Engineer - VP

Join us as an AI Engineer - VP, Real-Time Data Engineering & Streaming Platforms at Barclays, where you will lead the design and evolution of enterprise-grade streaming and real-time data capabilities that underpin critical business, regulatory, and client outcomes. This is a hands-on engineering leadership role for someone who can write production-quality software, shape technical direction, lead teams, and run low-latency, resilient, and secure streaming platforms at scale in production. This role is suited to a senior engineering leader with deep expertise in streaming architectures and large-scale data platforms, combined with the ability to lead engineers while remaining close to the code, architecture, delivery, and production operating model. You will be expected to make strong technical decisions, contribute directly to solution design and implementation when needed, coach engineers through complex problems, and maintain high standards across software quality, platform resilience, scalability, observability, and operational execution.

To be successful you should have experience with:

• Deep experience designing, building, and operating real-time data platforms, streaming architectures, and distributed systems in complex enterprise environments.

• At least 8 years of hands-on experience running real-time streaming solutions in production at scale, with accountability for reliability, performance, observability, recovery, and operational stability.

• Strong software engineering capability, with fluency in Java programming and a track record of writing production-grade code and leading technical implementation for business-critical systems.

• Strong technical credibility in streaming and event-driven systems, including topics such as partitioning, ordering, stateful processing, delivery semantics, replay, fault tolerance, and platform resilience.

• Proven experience leading engineering teams, mentoring developers, and driving delivery while maintaining high standards across design, coding, testing, and operational support.

• Experience working with modern streaming and data technologies such as Kafka, Pulsar, Kinesis, Flink, Spark Structured Streaming, or equivalent platforms, with the judgment to select the right patterns for the problem.

• Strong understanding of control, governance, and risk management expectations for production data platforms, particularly where resilience, auditability, and data correctness are business critical.

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Experience leading engineering organizations using modern data platforms such as Databricks or equivalent ecosystems for large-scale data and analytics workloads.

• Working knowledge of cloud-native platform capabilities across compute, storage, orchestration, observability, and security in support of resilient data services.

• Strong understanding of software engineering lifecycle practices, including CI/CD, platform automation, release controls, and operational governance for critical services.

• Experience operating in financial services, payments, trading, or similarly regulated environments where non-functional requirements, controls, and recoverability are essential.

• Ability to communicate complex technical strategy clearly to senior business and technology audiences, building confidence, alignment, and support for change.

You may be assessed on 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 role is based out of Pune.

Purpose of the role

To  lead and manage engineering teams, providing technical guidance, mentorship, and support to ensure the delivery of high-quality software solutions, driving technical excellence, fostering a culture of innovation, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to align technical decisions with business objectives. 

Accountabilities

• Lead engineering teams effectively, fostering a collaborative and high-performance culture to achieve project goals and meet organizational objectives.
• Oversee timelines, team allocation, risk management and task prioritization to ensure the successful delivery of solutions within scope, time, and budget.
• Mentor and support team members' professional growth, conduct performance reviews, provide actionable feedback, and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Evaluation and enhancement of engineering processes, tools, and methodologies to increase efficiency, streamline workflows, and optimize team productivity.
• Collaboration with business partners, product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions and ensure a cohesive approach to product development.
• Enforcement of technology standards, facilitate peer reviews, and implement robust testing practices to ensure the delivery of high-quality solutions.

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.