Platform Delivery Lead

Shawbrook provides finance to a wide range of customer segments that value the premium experience, flexibility and certainly we deliver.  We are a purpose-led organisation, with a focus on delivering long-term sustainable value for all our stakeholders.

We have a diversified offering, with our innovative lending propositions tailored to meet specific customer needs in carefully selected markets across Lending, Mortgages and Deposits. Our products range from complex structured credit facilities for growth-focused businesses to mortgages for professional landlords and property investors, as well as simple loans for consumers delivered digitally.  We fuel our lending through customer deposits, which we attract by delivering a premium experience, choice and consistently great value to smart savers.

The business model we have created is unique and difficult to replicate, with our ‘best of both’ approach combining deep human expertise with advanced digital, tech and data capabilities.  This combination not only allows us to deliver excellent customer experiences, but to do so efficiently and at scale.  We are proud of our innovative and agile culture, which drives consistently high employee engagement scores and makes Shawbrook an attractive destination for the best talent. If you’re willing to roll up your sleeves, contribute new ideas and believe anything is possible, you’re our kind of person.

Work with us because you:

• Want to be part of a bank built for the dynamics of the modern world
• Relish a challenge and enjoy a fast-paced, innovative and hardworking culture
• Enjoy finding new and better ways to solve complexity and make things happen
• Want to belong to a diverse culture that stands shoulder to shoulder with minority and underrepresented groups
• Care about society and the environment and want to be part of a business that cares too
• Want to continue to grow professionally and be the best version of yourself

Platform is a new and deliberate idea at Shawbrook. Rather than every part of the bank solving the same foundational problems again and again, we are building shared platform services, the capabilities that everything else is built on. Done well, these foundations let our lending, mortgages, deposits and servicing value streams move faster, more safely, and at lower cost.

This role does two things at once. It leads delivery across four platform teams, and it shapes the platform model itself, how platform teams work, how the verticals consume them, and what good looks like for a foundational service. This is not a role that inherits a finished operating model. It is a role that helps define one.

Key Responsibilities

The teams you will lead - You will be accountable for the delivery outcomes of four platform teams:

Vault

Core banking on Thought Machine — the ledger and product engine the bank is migrating onto. Buy to Let is already live, with the wider migration underway.

Payments

The payments platform — moving money safely, reliably and at scale on behalf of every customer-facing product.

Customer

The shared customer capability — a single, consistent view of the customer that the verticals build on.

Accounts

The shared accounts capability — the foundational account services the rest of the bank consumes.

Together these are the foundations of the bank. Your job is to make them dependable, reusable and genuinely enabling — so the value streams can move faster because the platform is solid beneath them.

What you will own

• Shaping the platform way of working — help define what platform means at Shawbrook: the operating model, how teams run as platforms rather than projects, and the standards for a foundational service. This is the differentiator of the role.
• Platform as an enabler — treat the verticals as your customers. Make the platform something they choose to build on because it makes them faster and safer, not slower.
• End to end delivery outcomes across Vault, Payments, Customer and Accounts — aligning delivery to business and customer value.
• The domain roadmap — balancing value, risk and capacity across four teams, and managing the interdependencies between them and the verticals that rely on them.
• The SteerCo narrative and its quality — a clear, honest platform story covering RAYG status, risks, financials and decisions, with no surprises. Any non green status carries a credible path to green with dates.
• Domain level risk — mitigation, escalation and governance proportionate to the foundational, regulated services you run, including key person, third party and route to live environment risk.
• The delivery budget — accurate forecasting within tolerance and disciplined management of vendor and partner performance (for example Thought Machine and other platform partners).
• Your people — line managing Senior Delivery Managers, building capability and succession depth, and owning engagement, psychological safety and retention as core deliverables.
• The AI agenda for the domain — championing adoption to lift delivery speed, predictability and quality.

Skills and experience

• Substantial delivery leadership experience owning outcomes across a domain, platform, value stream or large portfolio in financial services.
• A platform mindset — you think in terms of reusable, foundational capabilities and treating internal teams as customers, and you are energised by shaping a model rather than inheriting one.
• Deep understanding of agile, lean and product centric delivery within a regulated environment, including governance, risk and audit expectations.
• Proven ownership of a delivery budget, forecasting and vendor performance at domain scale.
• Experience line managing and developing senior delivery professionals, and building team capability and culture.
• Credible at SteerCo and with senior Product and Engineering leaders; able to own a domain narrative and influence prioritisation.
• Fluent in delivery and flow metrics (including DORA) and in applying AI to lift delivery performance.

Helpful, not essential: exposure to core banking transformation (Thought Machine / Vault or comparable), payments platforms, or stand-up of a platform / shared-services operating model.

How you will lead — our cultural anchors

Building an amazing place to work is part of this role, not separate from it. A high bar and a great place to work are the same agenda: the strongest teams perform because they are safe enough to be honest and hold each other to high standards. You will set and uphold the anchors that define delivery at Shawbrook:

• Trust over control.
• Proactive ownership.
• Say hard things early.
• Outcomes over tasks.
• Curiosity, and celebrate and learn.

Where it leads

This is Level 3 of a clear five level delivery pathway. The step up from here is to Head of Delivery — translating strategy into delivery outcomes across a function, owning portfolio performance, and partnering with Product Officers and technology leadership. Shaping the platform model is exactly the kind of system level work that builds toward it. We invest in delivery careers, and we want this domain to be a place people choose to build one.

We take your health and well-being very seriously by providing a range of benefits to give you and your family peace of mind. These include:

• Market leading family friendly policies such as access to our Maternity, Adoption and Paternity policies from Day 1 of your employment
• Free access to Headspace, a mindfulness & meditation digital health app
• Free access to Peppy digital health app that offers personalised support through fertility treatment becoming a parent or menopause
• EAP (Employee Assistance Programme) - Offering you support on a wide range of subjects including financial concerns, mental wellbeing and more general queries around family, work, housing, and health
• Cycle to work scheme
• Discounts on gym membership
• Contributory pension scheme & death in service

Your Lifestyle - It’s important you strike the right balance between your work and personal life. We provide benefits to support you when at work and when you’re enjoying your leisure time.

• Minimum of 25 days holiday per year
• Option to buy or sell holiday days through our flexi-holiday scheme
• Discounts on gym membership nationwide
• Access to discounts on a range of high street and online brands
• Community support and charitable giving

Your Contribution - We’re focused on rewarding those that go the extra mile in helping us achieve our goals.

• Participation in our annual discretionary bonus scheme designed to reward your contribution to our success
• Proudly Shawbrook recognition scheme focused on recognising our role models and thanking our colleagues for a job well done