Development Lead

Job Summary

Digital Ledger Technology (DLT) & Digital Assets (DA) are the strategic client access platforms for CIB clients to transact with the Bank.

We are seeking an experienced and technically strong Development Manager to lead software initiatives within our Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Centre of Excellence. This role involves end-to-end ownership of innovative, high-impact projects involving blockchain infrastructure, digital assets, and enterprise-grade integrations. The ideal candidate will bring a balance of deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and strong people management skills to drive product delivery across emerging technologies and regulated environments.

As a Delivery Lead the candidate is expected to lead the full tribe of development squads working on the multiple aspects of this domain and future strategic areas (on smart contracts and tokenization). The role demands that the person works as a trusted business partner to manage multiple programs & projects within this domain. Associates will need to create and nurture relations with business partners, technology heads, operations, group & country products, risk governance and planning support & services. A strong technology acumen is required to create innovative solutions for the Bank’s digital banking space. A key responsibility will be to evolve the engineering organization toward an AI-native development model, where AI coding assistants and specialized engineering agents augment engineers across analysis, design, development, testing, security, documentation, deployment and production support, while maintaining appropriate human oversight, security, auditability and regulatory controls

Key Responsibilities

Strategy

• Advocate and communicate the global digital vision and strategy to all stakeholders across the business and work.

• Maintain an understanding of external competitive platform developments, smart contracts and their impact on our business and innovation strategy.

• Build and foster an engineering excellence culture through leadership and direction. Build an engineering and system thinking mindset with values such as fast feedback, repeatability, simplicity, and clean code.

• Drive a modern approach to engineering excellence, ensuring fast, frequent and high-quality value delivery. With thought Leadership, evangelism, and upskilling the workforce on cloud, architecture, engineering and Open Banking and API

• Establish an engineering model where AI augments — rather than replaces accountability for — architecture, coding, testing, security and production decisions.

• Identify opportunities for agentic workflows spanning requirements → design → code → test → security validation → deployment → observability.

• Build reusable digital assets and payment capabilities rather than point solutions.

• Maintain awareness of emerging blockchain, tokenization, payments, AI and software-engineering technologies and assess their applicability to the Bank.

• Drive adoption of AI-assisted software development across engineering teams.

• Establish controlled use of enterprise-approved coding assistants and AI engineering tools.

• Develop agentic software-development workflows capable of assisting engineers

• Develop reusable AI agents for engineering activities where appropriate.

• Establish integration of AI agents with engineering toolchains including source control, IDEs, CI/CD, test automation, security scanning and observability platforms.

• Define human-in-the-loop controls so that engineers remain accountable for generated code and production changes.

• Establish controls covering source-code confidentiality, intellectual property, data leakage, model access, prompt security, auditability and traceability.

• Ensure AI-generated code follows the same — or stronger — security, quality, testing and approval requirements as human-developed code.

• Establish engineering metrics measuring AI impact on developer productivity, code quality, defect rates, test coverage, security findings and delivery lead time.

• Encourage teams to move from simple AI coding assistance toward controlled multi-agent engineering workflows, where appropriate.

Business

• Provide technical leadership and guidance in Digital Ledger Technologies (DLT) related solutioning.

• Build & maintain blockchain protocols, smart contracts, tokenization modules and consensus algorithms.

• Ensure security, integrity, and scalability of blockchain solutions.

• Stay updated with emerging trends and technologies in blockchain and cryptocurrency.

• Troubleshoot and resolve issues in blockchain applications and systems.

• Suggest blockchain development processes and best practices.

• Perform code reviews to ensure code quality, maintainability, security, scalability, and adherence to coding standards.

• Trusted advisor to the business. Work hand in hand with Business platforms CPOs and COO partners, taking product programs from investment decisions into design, specifications, solutioning, development, implementation and hand-over to operations, securing support and collaboration from other SCB teams.

• Manage business partner expectations. Ensure delivery to business meeting time, cost and with high quality

• Providing thought leadership on solutions and collaborating across team and functional lines

• Drive an ecosystem of innovation and enabling business through technology

• Blockchain Platforms: Hands-on experience with permissioned blockchain frameworks such as Quorum, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Fabric, and Corda, including provisioning, configuration, and orchestration.

• DLT Use Cases: Demonstrated understanding of DLT applications such as Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization, Cross-Border Payments, Decentralized Identity (DID), and smart contract-based financial products.

• Software Engineering: Strong proficiency in backend development using Python or Golang, Solidity, RESTful API design, and microservice architectures.

• DevOps & Deployment: Experience with containerization and orchestration using Docker, Kubernetes, and Helm. Proven track record deploying systems on AWS EKS or Azure AKS using CI/CD pipelines.

• Cryptography & Security: Knowledge of cryptographic primitives including public/private key infrastructure, symmetric/asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, and secure key management.

• System Integration: Ability to collaborate across platform, security, network, and compliance teams to ensure seamless integration of DLT services into enterprise ecosystems.

• Solution Governance: Experience working with solution architects and security domain experts to design and implement systems compliant with internal controls, regulatory requirements, and best practices.

• Cloud & Infrastructure: Familiarity with AWS and/or Azure networking, access controls, high-availability setups, and infrastructure automation.

Processes

• Leadership and effective communication of policies and concepts, framework to manage the code data quality and security as part of the DevOps policy in place.

• Responsibility to follow diligently the Technology System Delivery Framework of the Bank for all deliveries.

• Inculcate the Group’s values and code of conduct in the DCDA delivery teams to ensure adherence to the highest standards of ethics and compliance to relevant policies and processes.

• Establish workstream governance and robust working relationship with internal and external stakeholders.

• Mobilize workstream team in cooperation with SCB key stakeholders and hand in hand with external stakeholders. Comfortable interacting with business users, compliance, security, and external partners, aligning technical goals with business outcomes.

• Problem Solving: Adept at navigating ambiguity and delivering creative, robust solutions under tight deadlines and evolving requirements.

• Communication: Clear and persuasive communicator able to translate complex technical ideas into actionable insights for diverse audiences.

• Results-Driven: Strong track record of meeting delivery milestones while upholding code quality and security standards.

People and Talent

• Mentorship: Ability to coach and support junior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning.

• Build deep capability across blockchain, payments, cloud and AI engineering.

• Develop engineers capable of combining domain knowledge + software engineering + AI-assisted development.

• Focus on developing talent by promoting a learning-based culture within the team encouraging them to leverage all learning opportunities available in the Bank.

• Lead through example and build appropriate culture and values. Set appropriate tone and expectations for the team and work in collaboration with risk and control partners.

Risk Management

• The ability to interpret and align all responsible applications under the Groups technology and security framework, identify key issues based on and put in place appropriate controls and measures.

• Familiar with the Global Payment Transparency Process and alignment to it always.

• Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters. Promote and embed a culture of openness, trust and risk awareness where ethical, legal, regulatory and policy complaint conduct is the norm

Governance

• Awareness and understanding of the regulatory framework, around infrastructure hosting and data management for client facing applications, and the regulatory requirements and expectations for the Bank. Ensure application design considerations are taken based on this.

• Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters. Promote and embed a culture of openness, trust and risk awareness where ethical, legal, regulatory and policy complaint conduct is the norm.

Regulatory and Business Conduct

• Display exemplary conduct and live by the Group’s Values and Code of Conduct.

• Take personal responsibility for embedding the highest standards of ethics, including regulatory and business conduct, across Standard Chartered Bank. This includes understanding and ensuring compliance with, in letter and spirit, all applicable laws, regulations, guidelines and the Group Code of Conduct.

• Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters.

Key Stakeholders

• DCDA Product Management Team Members

• FM Product Management Team Members

• CIB T&I Management Team Members

• Country CIOs & Technology

• Global COOs (FM, TB & Channels)

• DCDA PMO

• Technology Interface Teams

Other Responsibilities

• Chair the design council for DCDA

• Represent DCDA in design reviews of other tech partners

Our Ideal Candidate

• 10+ years' experience in Banking, Financial services, with 5+ years of hands on experience in blockchain initiatives.

• Hands-on experience with permissioned blockchain frameworks such as Quorum, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Fabric, and Corda, including provisioning, configuration, and orchestration.

• DLT Use Cases: Demonstrated understanding of DLT applications such as Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization, Cross-Border Payments, Decentralized Identity (DID), and smart contract-based financial products.

• Demonstrable experience introducing AI-assisted engineering or software-development automation into engineering teams.

• Software Engineering: Strong proficiency in backend development using Python or Golang, Solidity, RESTful API design, and microservice architectures.

• DevOps & Deployment: Experience with containerization and orchestration using Docker, Kubernetes, and Helm. Proven track record deploying systems on AWS EKS or Azure AKS using CI/CD pipelines.

• Cryptography & Security: Knowledge of cryptographic primitives including public/private key infrastructure, symmetric/asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, and secure key management.

• System Integration: Ability to collaborate across platform, security, network, and compliance teams to ensure seamless integration of DLT services into enterprise ecosystems.

• Solution Governance: Experience working with solution architects and security domain experts to design and implement systems compliant with internal controls, regulatory requirements, and best practices.

• Cloud & Infrastructure: Familiarity with AWS and/or Azure networking, access controls, high-availability setups, and infrastructure automation.

• Standards & Methodologies: Proficiency in SDLC practices, Agile delivery, Git-based version control, issue tracking systems, and technical documentation

Role Specific Technical Competencies

• Technology Solution Engineering and Delivery

• Dev Ops

• Infrastructure Management

• Working knowledge of new technology frameworks / design patterns / advances

• Hands on with Code / Configurations of systems

• Incident Management and Resolution

• Stakeholder Management

• Domain / Functional Knowledge

• Strong understanding of blockchain technologies, distributed ledger, and smart contracts and tokenization flows.

• Knowledge of cryptography and blockchain protocols.

• Familiarity with P2P networks, zero knowledge proofs, staking and consensus algorithms.

• Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to think analytically.

• Strong communication and collaboration skills.

• Knowledge of financial services, payments, or cryptocurrency industries.

• A strong understanding of security best practices for building enterprise applications

• Proficiency in programming languages such as Solidity, Daml , Java, JavaScript, Rust, NodeJS, Go, or Python.

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

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.

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