Senior API Engineer in RTGS Technology

This role presents an exciting opportunity for a Senior API Developer to play a critical part in the development and support of the Bank of England's Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service - a piece of UK critical national infrastructure that settles on average £800bn per day.

Reporting to an RTGS Technology Manager, you will be a senior member of a multidisciplinary engineering team responsible for the design, build, operation and continuous improvement of high-throughput, secure APIs that underpin the RTGS service.

In addition to strong hands-on technical delivery, this role carries clear senior-level accountabilities for engineering quality, technical leadership within the team, mentoring, and contribution to effective Agile delivery.

This role requires core RTGS hours to be supported and brings the opportunity for staggered starts or ends to the standard working day. The role includes out of hours working, incident support and a 24x7 standby rota., As this role includes support, you may have problem tickets to resolve, including detailed root cause analysis. As a senior engineer, this will often involve working on more complex or higher-risk issues and ensuring that learnings are fed back into the team to improve quality and resilience.

A typical day would start with the team's stand-up meeting for the current sprint where you'll discuss your workload, blockers and risks, providing technical input where appropriate. You may also attend a major incident management meeting where, as the engineer on call, you have worked on problem investigation, root cause and resolution, supporting technical decision-making as required.

Next, you may be working on something new, a production fix or a project-related activity. This may include designing or implementing changes, reviewing code from other engineers, or providing guidance to ensure changes meet agreed engineering standards. As this role includes support, you may also have tickets to resolve requiring detailed knowledge of the application and central bank settlement processes.

You may draft and raise a change request through the Bank's formal processes or attend an audit representing technology, providing appropriate technical context where required. You may also participate in refinement, planning or review sessions to help identify dependencies, risks and delivery considerations early.

Depending on the cover rota you are on, it could mean monitoring the close of the RTGS system and then standby cover. For other weeks, you will not be on a rota so can dedicate time to change activities, continuous improvement and supporting colleagues within the team.

Role Requirements

You are a dedicated API engineer within an Agile environment and meet the minimum criteria. You have a clear collaborative approach to working with others, are comfortable providing constructive challenge where appropriate, and are able to apply sound technical judgement when working on complex or higher-risk changes, while remaining keen to share knowledge with colleagues.

You also understand that the RTGS environment is critical to the UK Payments Systems which requires a methodical approach and flexible to work outside core hours as required.

You use best practice in Continuous Improvement and Continuous Development to manage environments, including maintaining high standards of quality, safety and documentation, and safely promoting code from pre-production to live, including day-to-day procedures and recovery procedures when required.

You work closely with cross-functional teams, helping ensure shared understanding of deployment processes, access to appropriate tools, and alignment towards common goals, providing senior technical input where appropriate.

• Experience supporting and maintaining business-critical services in a production environment
• Proven hands-on expertise in Java and Spring Boot, building high-throughput, multi-threaded RESTful services with Spring Data and securing them end-to-end using Spring Security
• Demonstrable hands-on experience on API Gateway at an enterprise scale (e.g., Apigee)
• Proficient in API documentation tools (e.g., Swagger/Open API)
• Practical experience of security, authorization, and authentication
• Experience with Performance tuning, including optimising API latency and fine-tuning Spring Boot performance (JVM tuning, connection pooling)
• Experience with databases (e.g., SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch)
• Experience working in Agile environments
• Experience with automated build and deployment, test driven development, continuous integration, and release management tooling

Essential Criteria

We are interested in hearing from candidates who have the following capabilities:

• Experience of building effective working relationships with others and provide constructive challenge where appropriate
• Attention to detail with the ability to craft concise, high standard of code
• Experience acting as a technical point of reference for complex changes, incidents or production issues
• Experience reviewing code and providing technical guidance to help maintain agreed engineering standards
• Experience contributing senior technical input into planning, refinement or estimation activities
• Experience working with cross-functional teams to balance delivery, quality and operational risk
• Experience supporting or mentoring less-experienced engineers through day-to-day work
• Strong analytical thinking with demonstrable ability for troubleshooting issues and leading change.
• Effective member of out of hours standby rota
• Provide in and out of hours support to the 24/7 production environment, resolving issues as they arise. This includes start of day and end of day working patterns

Desirable Criteria

It would also be beneficial, but not necessary, to have some of the following:

• Good awareness of SWIFT products and how they can work with APIs
• Knowledge of OIDC, OAuth 2.0, SAML, and JWT implementation at the gateway layer
• Knowledge of OpenShift and RedHat Enterprise Linux
• Splunk, Control-M, Docker, Terraform, Bash scripting
• Middleware: IBM ACE or JMS/web services experience
• Kibana, ELK, Elastic Search
• Working knowledge of User interface technologies (React, Node.js etc.)
• Experience with Apache Kafka or similar event streaming platforms
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Software or Electronic engineering or other related discipline.
• Conversant with the modern Java and Linux development frameworks and tool stack (e.g. Micro-Services with Java, Spring/Hibernate, Oracle)
• Experience contributing to continuous improvement of engineering practices or ways of working

We encourage flexible working, part time working and job share arrangements. Part time salary and benefits will be on a pro-rated basis as appropriate.

We offer a salary as follows: £64,480 - £72,540

In addition, we also offer a comprehensive benefits package as detailed below:

• Currently a non-contributory, career average pension giving you a guaranteed retirement benefit of 1/80th of your annual salary for every year worked. There is the option to increase your pension (to 1/65th) or decrease (to 1/105th) in exchange for salary through our flexible benefits programme each year. The Bank has the discretion to vary standard accrual rates and dial up and dial down rates at any time and to withdraw dial up and dial down options at any time.
• A discretionary performance award based on a current award pool.
• An 8% benefits allowance with the option to take as salary or purchase a wide range of flexible benefits.
• 26 days' annual leave with option to buy up to 12 additional days through flexible benefits.
• Private medical insurance and income protection.

RTGS settles on an average day £800 billion and is critical national infrastructure. Each day brings new challenges and opportunities, creating an environment suited for those who work well in a fast-paced setting. An individual whose approach is getting it "right" in tight timescales can make a real difference., If you do not have all the Minimum or Desirable Criteria, your application will be considered. It is important to note that the Bank has a robust ITIL Change Management process, has business-critical processes that depend on our RTGS environment, and requires incidents on these technologies to be resolved quickly. How This Role Fits into the Wider Bank This role is part of the Markets, Banking, Payments & Resolution division within the Bank of England : Technology RTGS Operations. The Bank values diversity and inclusion - we want to reflect the society we serve better; we want the best people to work for us and we want our workplace to be inclusive. We value all forms of diversity, including but not limited to age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religion and sexual orientation. One way we support diversity and inclusion is through our staff run networks. Our Approach to Inclusion The Bank values diversity, equity and inclusion. We play a key role in maintaining monetary and financial stability, and to do that effectively, we believe we need a workforce that reflects the society we serve. At the Bank of England, we want all colleagues to feel valued and respected, so we're working hard to build an inclusive culture which supports people from all backgrounds and communities to be at their best at work. We celebrate all forms of diversity, including (but not limited to) age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status. We believe that it's by drawing on different perspectives and experiences that we'll continue to make the best decisions for the public. We welcome applications from individuals who work flexibly, including job shares and part time working patterns. We've also partnered with external organisations to support us in making adjustments for candidates and employees in the recruitment process where they're needed. For most roles where work can be carried out at home, we aim for colleagues to spend half of their time in the office, with a minimum of 40% per month. Subject to that minimum requirement, individuals and managers should work together to find what works best for them, their team and stakeholders.