UK Payments Market Infrastructure & Integration Lead - London
With strong knowledge of Faster Payments (FPS), payment clearing and settlement, and bank-to-scheme integration.
The role will lead the design and integration of payment platforms with FPS market infrastructure, covering scheme connectivity, payment gateways, ISO 20022 messaging, clearing and settlement, payment-engine integration, resilience, and operational readiness.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead FPS market infrastructure, connectivity, and integration architecture.
- Design end-to-end flows across Channels - Payment Engine/Hub - FPS Gateway - FPS Central Infrastructure - Participant Banks.
- Define integration between FPS and core banking, payment hubs, fraud, sanctions, Confirmation of Payee, accounting and reconciliation services.
- Design inbound/outbound FPS payment flows, including validation, routing, duplicate handling, rejects, returns and exception processing.
- Define ISO 20022 message flows and associated mapping/transformation requirements.
- Assess FPS gateway and connectivity options, including build, buy and connectivity-provider approaches.
- Support clearing and settlement integration, including Bank of England/RTGS, Treasury, liquidity and reconciliation requirements.
- Define non-functional requirements covering security, availability, resilience, scalability, monitoring, and disaster recovery.
- Support scheme onboarding, integration testing, certification, migration, cutover and production readiness.
- Work closely with business, architecture, engineering, operations, Treasury, risk/compliance, and external payment-infrastructure stakeholders.
Essential Skills & Experience
- Strong experience in UK payments and Faster Payments (FPS).
- Good understanding of Pay.UK payment infrastructure, clearing, and settlement.
- Hands-on knowledge of FPS connectivity, payment gateways, or payment-hub integration.
- Strong knowledge of ISO 20022, payment messaging, and Real Time payments.
- Understanding of Bank of England settlement/RTGS concepts within UK payments.
- Strong API, messaging, and system-integration architecture experience.
- Experience with payment processing, including validation, routing, rejects, returns, reconciliation, and exception handling.
- Experience designing highly available, resilient, business-critical payment solutions.
- Strong stakeholder management skills across business and technology teams.
Desirable Skills
- FPS direct-participation or sponsor-bank migration experience.
- CHAPS, Bacs, or wider UK payment-scheme knowledge.
- ISO 8583 to ISO 20022 migration/integration experience.
- Confirmation of Payee, fraud, and sanctions integration.
- Treasury, liquidity, and settlement integration.
- Payment modernization or Real Time payments transformation experience.
Key Deliverables
- Current and target-state FPS architecture
- FPS gateway/connectivity design
- End-to-end payment flows
- Integration and interface catalogue
- ISO 20022 message/mapping requirements
- Clearing and settlement integration design
- NFR/resilience requirements
- Testing, certification, and production-readiness approach
£500-545 inside IR35
