Technical Lead | Santander

Spearheaded the development of a configurable product engine and scaled a high-performing engineering team for a global banking leader.

Overview

As Technical Lead for ISBAN (Santander's technology arm), I was tasked with solving one of the most critical bottlenecks in the bank's digital operations: the slow rollout of new financial products. I balanced high-level architectural design with hands-on leadership of a rapidly growing team.

Challenges

• Repetitive Development: Each new product or channel required a fresh implementation, leading to fragmented logic and maintenance nightmares.
• Team Scaling: Managing the explosion of the delivery team from a small group of 8 to a large, distributed unit of over 20 developers while maintaining quality.
• Legacy Integration: Synchronizing modern frontend frameworks (React/Angular) with heavy J2EE/WebSphere backend infrastructures.

Solution

Dynamic Process Architecture: I designed an API-first architecture that used metadata to define business rules and UI flows. This allowed the bank to 'configure' a new product rather than 'coding' it from scratch.

Engineering Leadership: Established standardized code review, quality gate, and task distribution practices. I mentored junior developers and defined clear roles within the team to ensure consistent delivery even as headcount tripled.

Results

• Reduced Time-to-Market: New product launches became significantly faster by leveraging the reusable core engine.
• Organizational Scaling: Successfully integrated more than a dozen new developers into the workflow without sacrificing code quality or project timelines.
• Multi-Channel Consistency: Guaranteed that the same business logic was applied whether the user accessed the service via internal branch software or public-facing digital platforms.