Principal Engineer | S4 | CIO Finance and Risk | Milton Keynes | Internal Mobility

Principal Engineer | S4 | CIO Finance and Risk | Milton Keynes | Internal MobilityCountry: United Kingdom

IT STARTS HERE

Santander (www.santander.com) is evolving from a global, high-impact brand into a technology-driven organisation, and our people are at the heart of this journey. Together, we are driving a customer-centric transformation that values bold thinking, innovation, and the courage to challenge what’s possible.

This is more than a strategic shift. It’s a chance for driven professionals to grow, learn, and make a real difference.

Our mission is to contribute to help more people and businesses prosper. We embrace a robust risk culture and all our professionals at all levels are expected to take a proactive and responsible approach toward risk management.

Enterprise Services is part of the Chief Information Office of Santander Technology and Operations, providing enterprise-wide systems and support services that help run and transform the bank’s technology capabilities. Specifically, this role will provide senior technical leadership across Enterprise services: P&C, Finance, Risk and other back offices support functions, ensuring solutions align with Santander engineering standards and target architecture.

THE DIFFERENCE YOU MAKE

Enterprise services are looking for a Principal Engineer based out of Milton Keynes, Unity Place.This role is on a fixed term contract for 12 months.

As a Principal Engineer in Enterprise Services, you will be responsible for shaping the technical direction and evolution of our technology estate, ensuring solutions are robust, secure and aligned with our strategic architecture and engineering principles.

You will inspire and guide engineering teams to deliver high-quality solutions, embrace modern technologies and ways of working, and continuously strengthen engineering capability and standards across the Domain.

We’re shaping the way we work through innovation, cutting-edge technology, collaboration and the freedom to explore new ideas. To succeed in this role, you will be responsible for:

• Provide senior technical leadership and oversight across strategic technologies, ensuring solution quality, resilience, security and effective management of technical risk align with Santander engineering standards and target architecture.
• Lead and develop Technical Leads and engineering teams, driving technical excellence, modern ways of working and effective adoption of new technologies, across products and programmes, strengthening capability, collaboration and engineering best practice.
• Partner with Domains and Centres of Excellence to drive adoption of standard practices, strategic technology solutions and AI-enabled engineering capabilities, including Gluon.

• Provide trusted technical advice to senior stakeholders, shaping Domain priorities, technology strategy and key architectural decisions.
• Drive responsible adoption of AI and GenAI across the Domain, aligned with Bank standards and in collaboration with relevant Centres of Excellence.
• Provide technical leadership across regulatory, audit and risk requirements, while driving simplification, engineering efficiency, cost optimisation and effective technology governance.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

Our people are our greatest strength. Every individual contributes unique perspectives that make us greater as a team and as an organisation. We’re enabling teams to go beyond by valuing who they are and empowering what they bring.

The following requirements represent the knowledge, skills, and abilities essential for success in this role. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Professional Experience

• Significant experience providing senior technical and engineering leadership across complex technology environments and migrations, including leadership of Technical Leads and engineering teams. Proven ability to deliver high-quality outcomes within demanding and immovable deadlines. (Required)
• Experience working with third-party technology providers and conducting Proofs of Concept (PoCs) to evaluate emerging technologies, tools and solutions against business and technical requirements. (Required)
• Experience across strategic technologies, including Cloud and AI, with a good understanding of solution integrity, scalability, resilience, performance and operational stability. (Required)
• Knowledge of Financial Services, Enterprise Services and Risk, ideally including regulatory services, risk models and/or Finance and Accounting. (Preferred)

Education

• Relevant academic qualification. (Required)
• Additional relevant technology, Cloud or engineering qualifications and certifications. (Preferred)

Languages

• English (Required)
• Spanish (Preferred)

Hard Skills

• Great understanding of modern software engineering practices, including CI/CD, DevOps, Infrastructure as Code, TDD, automated testing and automated software delivery. (Required)
• Great knowledge of AWS and Cloud technologies, including the design and operation of scalable, resilient and secure solutions. (Required)
• Great knowledge and practical experience of AI technologies, tools and methodologies, including their application within software engineering and technology delivery. (Required)
• Experience with data and analytical technologies, including ETL, Apache Spark, Scala, Python and related analytical languages. (Required)
• Excellent understanding of observability and operational engineering, including monitoring, logging, tracing, troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, performance engineering and capacity planning. (Required)
• Knowledge of Unix/Linux scripting, workload scheduling and distributed systems, including tools such as Control-M. (Preferred)

Soft Skills:

• Great technical leadership, sound judgement and the ability to operate effectively in complex, ambiguous and rapidly changing environments. (Required)
• Excellent stakeholder management, collaboration and communication skills, with the credibility to engage and influence at senior levels. (Required)
• Ability to provide technical direction across multiple teams, influencing architecture and engineering decisions without direct authority and driving adoption of engineering standards, architecture principles and best practices. (Required)
• Solution-oriented, proactive and well organised, with the ability to prioritise effectively and deliver high-quality outcomes against demanding deadlines. (Required)

WE VALUE YOUR IMPACT

At Santander, your contribution matters. We recognise the difference you make every day, and we make sure you feel valued, supported and rewarded in return.
Here, recognition goes beyond pay. It’s about the pride you feel in your work, the impact you have on customers and communities, and the opportunities you have to grow and thrive — personally and professionally.

Salary Range:

£87,200.00 - £130,800.00 per annum (depending on experience)

This salary range represents the expected remuneration for the role. Annual salary is based on a standard 35-hour working week. Actual salary offered will depend on skills, experience, qualifications and location.

• Competitive rewards that reflect the real impact you make and the value you bring.
• Wellbeing that goes beyond work — we work with a range of wellbeing partners across our 4 pillars of wellbeing (physical, mental, social and financial) to give you access to a suite of apps, discounted gym and fitness access, weekly online classes, flexible healthcare and mental health support.
• Support for every life stage — from menopause and pregnancy to parenthood and beyond, with enhanced family leave, childcare options and tailored wellbeing support.
• Time to give back through volunteering opportunities that let you make a difference in the communities we serve.
• Global growth opportunities to shape your career, learn new skills and explore what’s possible across our international network.

Ready to be recognised? It starts with you.

LOCAL COMPLIANCE

At Santander, we’re proud to be an inclusive organisation that provides equal opportunities for everyone — regardless of age, gender, disability, civil status, race, religion or sexual orientation.

We’re committed to creating a recruitment experience that’s accessible, fair and welcoming for all candidates.

We want our people to thrive — at work and at home — while delivering the best outcomes for our customers and supporting each other to grow.

To make this possible, our roles are site-based with a hybrid working pattern, where colleagues are expected to attend the office at least 12 days per month (pro-rata for part-time roles).

When applying, please consider the travel distance, time and cost to your chosen office location(s).

We welcome applications on the understanding that, should you be offered this role, there may be no relocation package available. Santander will pay the employer mandatory government fees that are required to pay in connection with visa sponsorship. You may be liable for your own personal employee immigration and relocation costs.( Only applicable for roles that are eligible for sponsorship)

WHAT TO DO NEXT

If this sounds like a role you are interested in, then please apply.

For further Guidance please visit Internal Mobility - Candidate Guidance.

If you want to know more about the opportunity:

Please contact: Aranzazu Perez-Unanua - Arancha.Perez@santander.co.uk

The Santander Way

Santander is evolving from a global, high-impact brand into a technology-driven organization, and our people are at the heart of this journey. Together, we are driving a customer-centric transformation that values bold thinking, innovation, and the courage to challenge what’s possible.

This is more than a strategic shift. It’s a chance for driven professionals to grow, learn, and make a real difference.

Our mission is to contribute to help more people and businesses prosper. We embrace a strong risk culture and all our professionals at all levels are expected to take a proactive and responsible approach toward risk management.

Ready to make it happen?

It starts with you. It starts here.