SVP – Engineering — Digital Lending Portfolio

The mandate

A privately held digital lender acquired a complementary portfolio and promised rapid product convergence. Instead, both technology estates remain live while commercial, regulatory and integration commitments compete for the same engineers. Teams report high utilisation, yet delivery dates move, production defects recur and architecture decisions are reopened by each programme. Commitments now exceed credible capacity and coherence.

The SVP – Engineering will oversee technology supporting approximately £4,600 million in assets and investment and lead around 650 employees and material partners. The scope spans software engineering, architecture, developer platforms, quality, reliability, engineering operations and strategic partners. Product, risk and operations remain peers, but the SVP owns technical choices, engineering capacity and delivery evidence across the value stream.

The first decision is where convergence creates value. A single platform is not automatically the answer: migration risk, regulatory obligations, data quality and product differentiation may justify temporary or lasting separation. Equally, running both estates indefinitely creates hidden tax. The executive must define target states, interim boundaries and retirement conditions.

Roadmap credibility requires explicit capacity. Regulatory and resilience work cannot be treated as unplanned interruption, while commercial sponsors must see the opportunity cost of new promises. Quality, operability and security need acceptance criteria inside delivery rather than later remediation.

Engineering data must describe flow rather than reward activity. Commit counts and utilisation cannot explain waiting time, dependency failure or production rework. The SVP will establish a small set of measures from decision to safe release and use them to change team boundaries, platform services and approval paths.

The acquired organisation also brings different technical career structures. Integration should create shared expectations for engineering, architecture and operational leadership without erasing valuable specialist identities. Promotion evidence, on-call responsibility and succession must be calibrated across both estates so talent decisions reinforce the target architecture.

Why this seat is open

This urgent replacement follows an accelerated transition. Interim accountability cannot resolve post-acquisition architecture and roadmap ownership, so the board seeks a permanent appointment within six to eight weeks. The predecessor’s outcome is handled professionally and confidentially.

What you will own

• Establish the target architecture, interim boundaries and retirement gates for both estates.
• Reconcile roadmap demand with engineering capacity, dependencies and regulatory obligations.
• Protect credit decisioning, origination, servicing and collections through controlled migration.
• Improve release quality, reliability, security and recovery evidence.
• Govern build, buy and partner choices with complete lifecycle cost and exit implications.
• Steward £4,600 million of assets and investment through technology allocation and forecasts.
• Lead 650 employees and partners and strengthen technical leadership succession.
• Give the board transparent delivery ranges, trade-offs and early escalation.

The first 12 months

The first 90 days should baseline systems, commitments, capacity, defects, incidents and dependencies. Meet the 30 stakeholders most consequential to integration, including engineers, product leaders, risk, operations and material partners. Identify commitments that lack teams or architecture, stabilise severe production risk, assess leaders and agree board gates for convergence and new demand.

Months four to nine should stop or re-sequence unsupported commitments, settle platform boundaries and deliver the first migration slice. Fill leadership gaps and improve developer flow, test automation and production ownership. The first measurable capacity release should come from retired duplication, reduced failure demand or simpler delivery paths.

By year end, roadmap predictability, quality and technical leadership should demonstrate repeatable improvement. The value case must fall within 10% of the approved baseline and forecasts should reconcile capacity, cash, customer and people assumptions across three quarters. Priority risks must close by approved dates with independent proof; no severe escalation may age beyond 30 days.

What the board will measure

• Delivery predictability against capacity-aware commitments and dependency ranges.
• Change failure, escaped defects, availability and recovery for critical lending journeys.
• Reduction in duplicated platforms, tooling and partner cost without increased risk.
• Migration progress against explicit data, service and rollback criteria.
• Retain 90% or more of essential engineers and establish ready-now cover for at least 70% of the SVP’s direct team.
• Quantified improvement in architecture coherence with a clean baseline and data owner.

The person

You are an SVP Engineering, VP R&D or Engineering Centre Head with 22–28 years in financial services or a similarly regulated technology business. You have owned a material platform or value stream end to end, including budget, talent and measurable service outcomes.

Your accountable portfolio has been at least £2,650 million and you have led no fewer than 650 people. You can demonstrate a post-acquisition integration where you rejected simplistic convergence, made explicit architecture choices and sustained better outcomes for two reporting periods. Engineering scale without production, customer and economic accountability is insufficient.

You communicate uncertainty precisely, protect technical standards without hiding behind them and can tell the board which promise must move when capacity is finite.

Compensation and terms

Base compensation is £210,000–280,000 plus annual incentive. The permanent role is onsite in London, supports international relocation and accommodates notice of up to six months. Measures balance roadmap, quality, integration, resilience and leadership.

Confidentiality

The unnamed organisation will be disclosed only after fit and confidentiality are established. Rounded operating facts remove identifying signals and should not prompt speculative contact.