Director of Engineering - Payments

About this role

Role Overview

The Director of Engineering – UK Payments will provide senior technology leadership for ClearBank’s UK-focused payments capabilities, owning the technical strategy, delivery oversight, and evolution of this domain, providing a highly utilised and relied upon set of capabilities for clients.

This role will lead an established set of teams as they evolve payments capabilities to scale and meet developing client needs. The Director will collaborate closely with Product partners to shape the long‑term roadmap, ensure robust technical foundations, and guide ClearBank’s progression in this vital domain.

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Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership

- Own the technology strategy for UK Payments, ensuring alignment with ClearBank’s wider platform and technology strategy.

- Partner with the Head of Product for UK to define and evolve a clear, credible roadmap covering near‑term delivery and longer‑term technical direction.

- Provide domain leadership and technical challenge, supporting informed decisions on build, buy, and partner options as the capability matures.

Delivery & Execution

- Provide senior oversight of an existing UK Payments engineering teams, ensuring delivery remains on track as the products evolve and new products are introduced.

- Ensure strong engineering fundamentals, including resilience, scalability, security, and operational readiness, appropriate for a regulated bank.

- Support the evolution of a highly utilised set of capabilities as they scale to meet future client needs.

Technology & Architecture

- Guide architectural decisions for payments capabilities while maintaining ClearBank standards.

- Define the technical direction of travel for payments, including how the platform could evolve to support additional capabilities and ease of further expansion.

- Ensure payments services integrate effectively with ClearBank’s other services.

People & Leadership

- Lead and develop engineers and engineering managers within the UK Payments domain.

- Set clear expectations, provide coaching, and build a culture of ownership, learning, and delivery.

- Contribute to the wider Director community, strengthening domain specialism while maintaining consistency across the technology organisation.

Risk, Regulation & Stakeholder Management

- Work closely with Risk, Compliance, and Legal teams to ensure UK Payments capabilities operate within applicable regulatory frameworks.

- Communicate clearly with senior stakeholders on progress, risks, and trade‑offs in a complex and evolving domain.

- Ensure appropriate controls, documentation, and operational processes are in place as the product scales.

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What We’re Looking For

Essential Experience

- Senior technology leadership experience (Director or equivalent) within payments, financial services, or adjacent regulated domains.

- Demonstrable experience owning and evolving complex platforms, preferably in a high throughput environment.

- Strong domain understanding of payments, sufficient to develop strategy and challenge technical decisions (deep blockchain specialism is not required).

- Proven ability to partner effectively with Product leadership to shape and deliver long‑term strategy.

Desirable Experience

- Experience integrating with third‑party schemes and platforms.

- Exposure to regulatory environments for payments.

- Experience scaling teams and platforms as product maturity and customer adoption increase.

Leadership & Behaviours

- Pragmatic and outcome‑focused, with sound judgement to balance speed, risk, and long‑term value.

- Comfortable operating in ambiguity and guiding teams through an evolving domain.

- Clear communicator who can explain complex concepts to both technical and non‑technical audiences.

- Role‑model for ClearBank’s expectations around ownership, delivery, and collaboration.

A little bit more about us!

ClearBank is Where You Can belong:

At ClearBank we think about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) a lot. Not because we think we should. But because we know we should – how else can we build a happy workforce and be successful as a business. We’re committed to making sure our teams reflect society. And we put energy and effort into making this a place where everyone feels at home, where they’re given the trust and encouragement to do their very best work. Here are some of the things we’re most proud of:

- 42% of our senior management roles are held by women

- Our enhanced family leave policies

- Launching our partnership with Code First Girls

- Increasing awareness of neurodiversity in the workplace through our partnership with the Inclusive Group

Our hiring process and what you can expect:

Application: a member of our talent acquisition team will review your application against the key requirements for the role and let you know within two weeks whether you’re moving forward to the next stage;

Screening: You’ll spend 30-45 minutes speaking to one of our recruiters learning more about the role and ClearBank, and we’ll get it know more about you, your experience and how your skills align with the role (this will be via phone or Teams video call). You can expect to hear back from us within seven days following this meeting (if things are taking longer than expected, we’ll let you know that too);

First Interview: You’ll spend one hour with a member of our hiring team focusing on your skills, competencies and your ways of working at the same time we’ll give you time to ask more questions about the role, the team and learn more about the…