Principal Engineer - Automation and Infrastructure Platform Engineering

To be successful in this role, you should bring a strong foundation in platform engineering, combining deep technical expertise with a product mindset to build scalable, reliable, and user-friendly platforms that empower development teams and drive business outcomes.

Core Technical Competencies

• Proficiency in Programming and Scripting
  Expertise in languages such as Python, PowerShell, or Go is essential for automating infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and operational tasks. You will design and implement reusable automation frameworks that reduce toil and accelerate delivery.
• Systems Engineering and Automation
  A deep understanding of operating systems, networking, and cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) is critical. You will architect and maintain robust, self-service platform components using tools like Terraform, Ansible, or Kubernetes, ensuring high availability and performance at scale.
• Incident Management and Troubleshooting
  You will lead incident response efforts, applying structured problem-solving techniques to quickly restore service, conduct root cause analysis, and implement preventative measures. Familiarity with observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk) is key to proactive monitoring and alerting.

Platform as a Product Mindset

• Customer-Centric Platform Design
  You will treat internal development teams as customers, gathering feedback, understanding pain points, and iterating on platform features to improve usability, reliability, and developer experience. This includes building intuitive APIs, clear documentation, and seamless onboarding experiences.
• Product Management Collaboration
  Partnering with product managers and engineering leads, you will help define platform roadmaps, prioritize features based on impact, and measure success through adoption metrics, developer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.
• Developer Enablement and Self-Service
  You will design and deliver self-service capabilities that abstract complexity and empower teams to deploy, monitor, and scale their applications independently, reducing friction and increasing velocity.

Leadership and Collaboration

• Cross-Functional Engagement
  You will leverage your leadership and collaboration skills to galvanize a diverse regional technology workforce, aligning SRE and platform engineering efforts across teams. Your ability to connect initiatives and foster shared goals will be critical to driving cohesive outcomes.
• Influential Communication Skills
  You will communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders, advocating for platform best practices, influencing cultural change, and promoting SRE principles such as reliability, observability, and continuous improvement.

Additional Highly Valued Skills

• Cloud-Native Architecture
  Familiarity with cloud-native patterns, container orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes), and service mesh technologies will enable you to build resilient, scalable platforms that align with modern application architectures.
• Strong Problem-Solving Abilities
  You will apply analytical thinking and a systems mindset to diagnose complex issues, identify systemic improvements, and drive long-term reliability and performance enhancements.

Purpose of the role

To drive technical excellence and innovation by leading the design and implementation of robust software solutions, providing mentorship to engineering teams, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and contributing to strategic planning to ensure the delivery of high-quality solutions aligned with business objectives. 

Accountabilities

• Provision of guidance and expertise to engineering teams to ensure alignment with best practices and foster a culture of technical excellence.
• Contribution to strategic planning by aligning technical decisions with business goals, anticipating future technology trends, and providing insights to optimize product roadmaps.
• Design and implementation of complex, scalable, and maintainable software solutions, considering long-term viability and business objectives.
• Mentoring and coaching to junior and mid-level engineers to foster professional growth and knowledge sharing, elevating the overall skillset and capabilities of the organization.
• 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.
• Innovation within the organization by identifying and incorporating new technologies, methodologies, and industry practices into the engineering process.

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.