Software Engineer

This Software Engineer role sits within Barclays' Risk Finance and Treasury technology function — a part of the bank that deals with how risk is measured, reported, and managed across the business. In plain terms, the team you'd be joining builds and maintains the software that helps Barclays understand its own financial exposure, process large volumes of transactional and risk data, and generate the reports regulators and internal stakeholders depend on. Day to day, this isn't a "write code in isolation" role. You'll be working closely with business analysts and end users to understand what they actually need, then translating that into technical designs and working software. Expect a mix of hands-on development — writing Java and Spring Boot services, building data pipelines with Spark, working with AWS cloud services — and a fair amount of collaboration, requirement discussions, and design conversations. Because the role sits at the AVP level, there's also an expectation of ownership beyond just writing code. You'll be expected to influence how problems get solved, mentor or guide less experienced engineers, and take responsibility for the quality and risk posture of what you ship. For someone who enjoys both the technical depth of big data and cloud engineering and the challenge of working directly with business stakeholders in a regulated industry, this is a role with real learning potential.

Understanding the business problem before writing a line of code. A big part of this role is sitting with business analysts and end users to figure out what's actually being asked for — not just implementing a spec handed down from above, but helping shape what the right solution even looks like. Turning requirements into working systems. Once the problem is understood, you'll be designing and building the actual solution — services in Java and Spring Boot, data processing jobs in Spark, and pipelines that move and transform large volumes of data reliably. Building for scale and performance. Given the volumes of data involved in risk and treasury functions, applications need to handle large datasets efficiently. Expect to spend real time thinking about performance, not just correctness. Working across the AWS ecosystem. From storage (S3) to compute (EC2, ECS, Lambda) to data services (Glue, Athena, RDS) to orchestration (Step Functions), you'll be expected to use AWS services fluently to build and run production pipelines. Contributing to feasibility studies and business cases. Beyond building, you'll help assess whether proposed solutions are actually viable, and support the business case that justifies the investment in building them. Supporting structured testing and change management. Shipping in a regulated banking environment means rigor — supporting testing processes and documentation like traceability matrices that ensure changes are properly tracked and validated. Mentoring and influencing. As an AVP-level engineer, you're expected to guide junior colleagues, contribute to technical decisions that affect the whole team, and represent the engineering perspective in cross-functional conversations.

Core Java (Java 17+) and Spring Boot — This is the primary language and framework stack for building the services in this role. Modern Java features and Spring's ecosystem for building production-grade backend services are non-negotiable here. Python or Scala — Used alongside Java, particularly for data engineering and Spark-based workloads, where these languages are often more natural fits than Java. Apache Spark and big data processing — Given the scale of risk and treasury data, Spark is central to how data gets processed, transformed, and made usable for downstream reporting and analytics. AWS (S3, EC2, ECS, Lambda, RDS, Glue, Athena, Step Functions) — This is a cloud-first role. You'll need working knowledge across storage, compute, serverless, database, and data-cataloguing/query services, plus experience building data pipelines and orchestrating workflows. Hadoop ecosystem (HDFS, YARN, Hive, Impala) and HQL — Even with a move toward cloud-native tooling, distributed computing fundamentals from the Hadoop world remain relevant for understanding how large datasets are stored and queried. Requirement-gathering and stakeholder communication — Because you'll work directly with business analysts and end users, the ability to translate ambiguous business needs into clear technical requirements is as important as coding ability. Agile (SAFE) methodology — Familiarity with Scaled Agile Framework practices helps you operate effectively within Barclays' delivery structure. Git or equivalent version control — Standard, but worth confirming you're comfortable with branching strategies and collaborative workflows at scale. CI/CD tools (TeamCity, Jenkins, GitLab) and Kafka/microservices — Listed as preferred rather than essential, but having exposure to automated deployment pipelines and event-driven microservice architectures will meaningfully strengthen an application.

Barclays hasn't published a specific degree requirement for this listing, but based on the seniority and technical depth expected, here's a realistic picture of who fits: Experience level: This is pitched at Assistant Vice President level, which typically means several years of hands-on engineering experience — this is not an entry-level or fresher role. Educational background: A degree in Computer Science, IT, or a related engineering discipline is the norm for roles like this, though Barclays hasn't explicitly restricted it. Domain exposure: Investment banking or risk domain experience is listed as preferred, not mandatory — but a genuine willingness to learn financial concepts is expected either way. Core technical readiness: Strong, demonstrable experience with Java, Spring Boot, Python or Scala, and big data tools (Spark, Hadoop) is essential, since these form the backbone of the role. If you're a fresher reading this — this particular listing likely isn't the right entry point, but it's a useful reference for what Barclays' engineering teams value, and worth revisiting once you've built a few years of hands-on experience.

While Barclays hasn't published an exact timeline for this listing, roles at this level typically follow a process similar to this: Application submission through the official Barclays careers portal. Resume shortlisting based on technical fit against the essential skills listed. Technical assessment or coding round, likely covering Java, Spark, and system/data-pipeline design. Technical interview(s) with the hiring manager or senior engineers, focused on hands-on experience and problem-solving. Managerial/stakeholder-fit round, given the AVP level and the requirement-gathering aspect of the role. HR discussion and offer. Keep in mind the exact process and number of rounds can vary based on the specific team and business need.