Head of Test Environment and Data

• Establish the Environment and Data vision by Defining and communicating a comprehensive engineering strategy that aligns with overall Corporate business goals.

• Striving to make testing environments as close to the real-world production setup as possible. This includes matching hardware, software, and network settings to catch environment-specific bugs early.
• Planning and coordinating the allocation of environments to various testing projects, managing conflicts, and addressing environment-related requests.
• Overseeing all changes made to the testing environments to prevent "environment drift," which occurs when environments become inconsistent and unreliable over time.
• Working with development, testing, and operations teams to ensure seamless integration and deployment across different environments. Assessing potential risks associated with the test environment, such as resource constraints or configuration issues, and developing mitigation strategies.
• Design Test Data architecture by maintaining and selecting the optimal tools as suggested by CTO Teams that can support performance, security, and scalability aspects.
• Maintaining the quality, consistency, and accuracy of test data, including masking of production data of sensitive information before it is used for testing.
• Generating Production like Test Data or acquiring Data from Production which post masking enables 100% test coverage. This can involve creating synthetic data for new functionality or using a subset of production masked data.
• Integrating test data provisioning into Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines so that the right data is available on demand i.e. through self-service portals, along with tools for reserving and rolling back data for repeatable tests.
• Ensuring all test data adheres to data privacy regulations like GDPR. This involves implementing data masking, anonymization, and other security techniques to protect sensitive data.
• Evaluating and selecting the right tools, technologies, and methodologies for Environment Build and Data obfuscation that align with the Corporate’s broader technology stack patterns and strategy.
• Taking responsibility for the design and configuration of the test infrastructure and environments, often working closely with DevOps teams.
• Mentor Data Engineers by Providing technical leadership and mentorship elevating the team's capabilities and fostering a culture of quality.
• Bridge communication gaps: Act as a central point of contact to ensure that all teams—development, product, and QA—are aligned on quality objectives and that potential issues are addressed transparently.
• Continuous improvement and innovation
• Evaluate new technologies: Research, evaluate, and deploy new and innovative testing tools and technologies to improve effectiveness and efficiency.
• Monitor and report metrics: Define and track key quality metrics and performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the health and effectiveness of the Environment process and Data mining; report findings to senior leadership.
• Standardize processes: Define and standardize Environment assurance procedures, guidelines, and documentation to ensure consistent practices across projects and teams.
• Manage risk: Conduct risk analysis to identify potential quality issues early and help prioritize Environments and Data basis Business Demands.
• Enforce compliance: Ensure that Environment and Data quality meets industry standards and regulatory requirements.

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.

Director Expectations

• To manage a business function, providing significant input to function wide strategic initiatives. Contribute to and influence policy and procedures for the function and plan, manage and consult on multiple complex and critical strategic projects, which may be business wide..
• They manage the direction of a large team or sub-function, leading other people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business. Or for an individual contributor, they lead organisation wide projects and act as deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross functionally. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• 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.