Job Description The Platform as a Service (PaaS) team holds a pivotal position in shaping the future of our platform services on our Technology Estate, defining and executing the strategic vision for our PaaS offerings, ensuring scalability, efficiency, and innovation in our platform services. The Lead Platform Engineer is a senior technical authority within the PaaS Windows Server Team, responsible for shaping, securing, and sustaining the bank's enterprise Windows Server and Active Directory estate. The role provides deep technical expertise, strategic influence, and leadership across incident response, change delivery, lifecycle management, and platform improvement initiatives. It also acts as a mentor and escalation point for Senior Platform Engineers, strengthening operational excellence and resilience. A focus of this role is a comprehensive understanding of Microsoft Active Directory (AD). Leading the strategy, configuration, health, and lifecycle of the enterprise Active Directory environment, which underpins all internal and external customer services. The role requires development and maintenance of robust disaster recovery procedures, including recovery from ransomware, site loss, directory corruption, and complex disaster recovery scenarios. As Lead Engineer, you will be a technical escalation point for Windows Server and VMWare environments. You will be expected to provide mentorship, coaching, and guidance to Senior and Junior Engineers along with supporting capability uplift across the team. You will push for best-practice adoption in design, troubleshooting, automation, and recovery procedures. You will need the required focus on operational integrity and performance of the Windows Server estate, ensuring stability, compliance, and service availability across the bank. This includes leading on major upgrades, migrations, platform refreshes, and optimisation work to align with strategic technology direction. Managing change and delivery is a key part of the role. Experience collaborating with delivery teams, architects, and infrastructure designer, to influence and implement platform changes and new services end-to-end is essential, whilst safeguarding platform integrity through controlled change processes, ensuring risk and impact assessments reflect enterprise expectations. Operational Resilience, Vulnerability Management, Security update scheduling, GPO Group Policy Object) and deployment of updates to the Windows server estate is a key part of the role, so experience in this area is crucial. At Nationwide, we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK-wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected. For this job, you'll be located at our nearest regional hub. There will be a need to regularly connect with colleagues for collaboration events in one of our office sites. This is anticipated to be once per quarter in Newcastle or Glasgow. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. Virgin Money is now part of Nationwide Nationwide acquired Virgin Money in October 2024. Virgin Money continues to serve customers on the high street, and there will be a phased and considered integration over the coming years. You'll be employed by Nationwide from day one, delivering real impact and benefitting from a highly competitive range of benefits. We're a workplace where you're rewarded, recognised and celebrated. If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can. Responsibilities What you'll be doing You will be working closely within and alongside other teams within Technology Operations Cyber Security (TOCS) and 3rd parties and collaborating with project teams to ensure that change within the environment is managed and controlled effectively. You'll lead expertise in 3rd line support of Microsoft Active Directory and other enterprise services delivered to Virgin Money internal and external customers and will have a high level of responsibility for identifying, analysing, quantifying, and communicating technical risk within the banks on premise & cloud platforms. You'll regularly be working closely with 1st and 2nd tier support teams to deliver a professional, effective enterprise support offering and project lifecycles including (but not be limited to) design influence, infrastructure build and test, while supporting and mentoring Engineers within the immediate team. The role may require occasional evening or weekend work for patch deployment, system upgrades\changes and you'll be included in the Out of Hours On call rota, which provides 24/7 cover About you For this role, you will have: A strong understanding of the best practices of installing, configuring and managing Microsoft Active Directory and its key components - TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, GPO, etc. Strong demonstratable experience of recovering Active Directory when faced with directory corruption and other disaster scenarios. A high level of experience in IT security, system administration, or a similar role with a focus on security update management and system introduction\upgrades Vast experience supporting Windows Server Operating System (Install, Configure, Manage) Demonstratable experience using MS Failover Clustering (Install, Configure, Manage) and experience administering SCCM (Install, Configure, Manage) & SCOM An understanding of cybersecurity principles, vulnerability management, and system optimisation Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to influence and drive change in a collaborative manner and experience of mentoring others to achieve technical goals and aspirations A high level of experience working in a highly governed and controlled IT environment Our customer first behaviours put customers and members at the heart of how we work together. They are the set of behaviours that every colleague needs to display, in every role: Feel what customers feel - We step into our customers' shoes, using their feedback and insights to empathise with them and to understand their needs, so that every decision we make starts and finishes with our customers in mind Say it straight - We are brave in speaking out and saying what we think - we're honest and direct with good intent, openly sharing diverse perspectives to reach the best conclusions and using language everyone can understand Push for better - We don't settle for mediocrity, we challenge the status quo, taking responsibility for continuous improvement and personal development Get it done - We prioritise what will have the greatest impact, we are decisive, and we take accountability for delivering brilliant customer outcomes You can strengthen your application by showing how our customer first behaviours resonate with you, and where you may have already demonstrated these. Qualifications The extras you'll get There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including: 25 days holiday, pro rata Access to private medical insurance A highly competitive pension to help you build a strong foundation for retirement Access to an annual performance-related bonus Training and development to help you progress your career A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme Life assurance to provide peace of mind for you and your loved ones in the event of your death Wellhub - access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year Banking - but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society We forge our own path at Nationwide. As a mutual, we're owned by our members - those customers who bank, save or have a mortgage with us. We challenge the financial sector status quo. We don't see customers as the engine of our own profit. We share our profits with them and put their needs first. Always there when they need us. Supporting them and their lives. If you're inspired by fairer finances, passionate about making a meaningful impact, and truly care about our customers, you're one of us. At Nationwide, you are challenged to grow and rewarded for doing so. Valued. Recognised. Inspired to be your best. As a community, we want our working lives to count. As a team, we celebrate what we achieve. As a standard-setter, we work for the good of customers, communities, and broader society. We are purpose-driven. Uncompromisingly customer. Unstoppably Nationwide. What to do next If this role is for you, please click the 'Apply Now' button. You'll need to attach your up-to-date CV and answer a few quick questions for us. We respond to everyone, so we will be in contact shortly after the closing date to let you know the outcome of your application.