Lead, Systems Reliability Engineering

Job Summary
The Financial Institution (FI) clearing division is fundamental to the operations of the Group. It encompasses the ownership of one or more pillars within the FI Clearing Hive, facilitating the clearing of USD, EUR, GBP, and JPY currency transactions. This is a critical application suite for the Group, necessitating consistent service delivery due to its reputational and regulatory significance; any service disruption could have substantial implications. Additionally, ongoing changes and functional enhancements are required. We invite you to join our Financial Institution (FI) Clearing team as a Lead Site Reliability Engineer, where you will be responsible for providing scalable, resilient, and fault-tolerant payment solutions. This position demands a diverse skill set, including vendor management, architecture, full-stack engineering, and business solutions, as part of a 24/7 production engineering team. You will spearhead the end-to-end technology strategy in collaboration with Development, Cash Product, and COO teams, ensuring both stability and scalability.

Key Responsibilities
System Reliability & Incident Governance

• Champion service excellence by overseeing Real Time Payment Systems and UDP platforms in high-volume, high-availability, low latency environments.
• Lead resilience initiatives including incident triage, RCA governance, and executive-level communication for minimal impact.
• Evolve observability frameworks using Prometheus, ELK, Grafana, and Geneos—standardizing dashboarding and proactive alerts.

Technology Leadership

• Shape and deliver multi-year technology strategy with Product and COO partners, aligning with digital transformation and real-time payment innovation.
• Establish automation-first culture with SIPs focused on throughput optimization, error reduction, and cost avoidance.
• Direct capacity planning and system performance reviews across global payment pipelines.

Risk & Compliance Oversight

• Drive risk mitigation across upstream/downstream platforms including SWIFTNet, CHIPS, Fedwire, ACH.
• Act as Technology GRC sponsor, embedding control checks, audit readiness, and regulatory traceability.
• Lead structured post-incident reviews with audit-grade documentation and systemic prevention programs.

Leadership & Team Development

• Lead a global team across time zones; set OKRs, measure KPIs, and run recurring performance huddles.
• Create a culture of resilience, mentorship, and continuous improvement.
• Guide onboarding and training plans for new hires and junior SRE talent.

Stakeholder & Vendor Engagement

• Represent Technology with Product Heads, Operations Directors, and Business Sponsors—delivering regular risk and performance briefings.
• Manage SLAs with third-party vendors and clearing houses (e.g., SWIFT, CHIPS, LCH), optimizing support contracts and vendor accountability.
• Translate complex system dependencies into digestible insights for executive and regulatory audiences.

Skills And Experience
Management Profile

• Oversee and manage a team of technical support specialists, ensuring efficient issue resolution.
• 7+ years of technical and people leadership in mission-critical systems, ideally covering SWIFTNet, MTs, ISO 20022, CHAPS, Faster Payments.
• Proven crisis command across critical application support ecosystems. Preferred support in financial markets such as FX / Rates / Capital Markets or Payments background
• Experience presenting technical topics to non-technical executives and compliance functions.
• Defect management and book of works tracking and presentation to stakeholders.

Technical Acumen

• Depth in UNIX/Linux, IBM MQ, Solace, Kafka, Oracle/PostgreSQL.
• Monitoring: Prometheus, Geneos, Prognosis, ELK, Grafana.
• Automation: Ansible, Control-M, Python/Bash/SQL.
• Strong knowledge in Infrastructure eg. Database / networking/ data centre / middleware
• Preferred training includes ITIL, DevOps, SRE, and Project Management.
• Preferred background in application support in financial market products such as FX / Rates / Capital Markets or any Payments ecosystem.

Extras

• Bachelor's or Master's in CS/IT or equivalent experience.
• Certifications: ITIL, DevOps, SRE, PMP preferred.
• Shift flexibility including weekend rotas and out of hour on call.

About Standard Chartered
We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together We

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

Expected annual base pay range for the role is 154,020 USD to 231,020 USD. The final offer will be determined on an individualised basis using a number of variables, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience and education, internal relativity, and specific work location. At Standard Chartered Bank, Base pay is only part of the total compensation package. Discretionary variable pay and a range of attractive bank sponsored benefit programs are available and designed to foster employee overall health and well-being including, but not limited to, a best in class 401k plan with up to 8% employer match, robust medical plan coverage with employer funded Health Savings Accounts, inclusive family building benefits, and flexible/hybrid working arrangements for many of our positions subject to role specific considerations Visit our careers website

What We Offer
In line with our Fair Pay Charter,
we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.

Recruitment Assessments
Expected annual base pay range for the role is 154,020 USD to 231,020 USD. The final offer will be determined on an individualised basis using a number of variables, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience and education, internal relativity, and specific work location. At Standard Chartered Bank, Base pay is only part of the total compensation package. Discretionary variable pay and a range of attractive bank sponsored benefit programs are available and designed to foster employee overall health and well-being including, but not limited to, a best in class 401k plan with up to 8% employer match, robust medical plan coverage with employer funded Health Savings Accounts, inclusive family building benefits, and flexible/hybrid working arrangements for many of our positions subject to role specific considerations.

Some of our roles use assessments to help us understand how suitable you are for the role you've applied to. If you are invited to take an assessment, this is great news. It means your application has progressed to an important stage of our recruitment process.

Visit our careers website