Crown Agents Bank is a vastly growing and regulated UK bank that connects emerging and frontier markets to the rest of the world, using FX and payments technology. We are transforming the way payments and FX move through emerging markets, reducing friction so that more money gets to those who need it. Emerging markets payments are usually challenging, expensive, unreliable and opaque. Our solutions help fix these pain points. Ultimately, we connect traditionally hard-to-reach regions to global financial infrastructure, giving access to the best prices and the fastest, most reliable settlement.
FX and cross-border payments are often complex and expensive, especially when operating in emerging markets. Crown Agents Bank (CAB) wraps its deep and trusted relationships and strength of network around innovative digital capabilities, and cross-border transaction banking solutions to enable fintech, corporates, governments, development organisations and banks to move money to, from, and across often hard-to-reach markets.
Job DescriptionRole Purpose
Crown Agents Bank connects emerging and frontier markets to the rest of the world, and that depends on software that can reliably integrate CAB's own systems with a wide range of third-party platforms, correspondent banks and internal data consumers. This role exists to design, build and evolve those integration solutions and the cloud-native platforms that support them – which, depending on where the team's priorities lie, may include the Operational Data Store (built on Debezium, Java, Spring Boot and Aurora Serverless v2) alongside other integration and platform work. The Associate Vice President works hands-on with a high degree of initiative and autonomy, contributing actively to design discussions alongside the Data and Integration Services Lead and Architecture colleagues, and taking responsibility for turning agreed designs into resilient, well-built software and infrastructure. Engineers are expected and encouraged to utilise the latest in AI tooling in their delivery and champion it’s use in our platforms.
Role Responsibilities
- Design, build and evolve integration solutions and cloud-native components across CAB's technology estate – for example the team's Operational Data Store
- Contribute actively to design discussions for these systems, working alongside the Data and Integration Services Lead and Architecture colleagues rather than in isolation.
- Lead the hands-on build of integrations with third-party systems and internal platforms, using AWS services such as ECS Fargate, SQS, MSK, S3, IAM, etc., to deliver secure, scalable data flows.
- Write production-quality code and build infrastructure hands-on, working alongside the rest of the team rather than operating solely at a design level.
- Translate requirements from stakeholders across Technology, Operations and the wider bank into practical technical designs, weighing trade-offs between build complexity, cost, resilience and time to delivery.
- Define and maintain infrastructure as code using Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines using Git and GitHub Actions, to support safe, repeatable deployment.
- Establish and monitor observability and data quality standards using Dynatrace and PowerBI, helping identify and resolve issues before they affect downstream consumers.
- Support and guide less experienced engineers and analysts on the team, reviewing code and designs and sharing knowledge that helps raise the bar on engineering practice.
- Use AI coding assistants and LLM-assisted development practices as a routine part of the software development lifecycle, and help the team evaluate new tools and approaches.
- Work across engineering, data, operations and vendor teams to scope, sequence and deliver new integrations, taking the initiative to spot and close gaps rather than waiting to be directed.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related STEM discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
Formal qualifications matter less than a demonstrated track record of designing, building and operating production software and cloud infrastructure.
AWS or Anthropic certifications (for example, Solutions Architect or Developer) are a plus, but not required; demonstrable, hands-on use of AI coding assistants and LLM-assisted development is valued in place of any formal AI certification.
Evidence of continued self-directed learning, such as courses, certifications or open-source contributions, is welcomed.
Experience
3-5 years' experience in a similar cloud or software engineering role, with a track record of taking real initiative and contributing to design decisions rather than only implementing to a specification.
Hands-on experience building and operating services on AWS, including ECS Fargate, SQS, MSK, S3, IAM, core networking and RDS/RDS Aurora, etc.
Strong experience with Java and Spring Boot; exposure to primarily event-driven systems, and to Postgres or Aurora Serverless v2, is beneficial where relevant to the project. Proficiency with SQL and database optimization are also necessary.
Practical experience with Terraform for infrastructure as code and with Git/GitHub Actions, or an equivalent, for CI/CD.
Experience with observability tooling such as Dynatrace, and/or with reporting and visualisation tools.
Experience using, or a strong demonstrated interest in, AI coding assistants and LLM-assisted development as part of the software development lifecycle; relevant AWS or Anthropic certifications are a plus.
Exposure to Oracle is a minor additional plus given CAB's core banking system runs on Oracle; financial services or SWIFT payments knowledge is beneficial for making informed technical trade-offs, but not a prerequisite, as it can be picked up on the job.
- Hybrid working
- Contributory personal pension plan: - Minimum: Employee 2% and Employer 7%. Employer matches contributions in 1% increments to a maximum of: Employee 5% and Employer 10%
- Life Assurance – 4 times annual salary
- Group Income Protection
- Private Medical Insurance – this may include cover for partner and or children at company cost. Cover includes Optical, Dental and Audiology
- Discretionary Bonus
- Competitive Annual Leave
- 2 Volunteering Days
- Benefit Hub
Crown Agents Bank London, England Office
3 London Bridge Street, London, United Kingdom, SE1 9SG
