Starling is the UK’s leading digital bank on a mission to make banking better! Our vision is fast technology, fair service, and honest values. All at the tap of a phone, all the time.
We are about giving customers a better way to spend, save and manage their money while taking better care of the planet which has seen us become a multi-award winning bank that now employs over 2,800 across five offices in London, Cardiff, Dublin, Southampton, and Manchester. Our journey started in 2014, and since then we have surpassed 3.5 million accounts. We are a fully licensed UK bank but at the heart we are a tech first company with a platform that enables our brilliant products.
Product is part of the technology team at the very heart of Starling. We work in a fast-paced environment that is all about making progress and building things that keep us on the cutting edge of fintech. We operate a flat structure to empower you to make decisions. Innovation and collaboration will be at the core of everything you do. Help is never far away in our open culture, you will find support in your team and from across the business.
The way to thrive at Starling is to be someone who is motivated and inquisitive, keen to help us understand problems and work collaboratively to design and build smart, pragmatic things that deliver the best possible results for our customers. Our purpose is underpinned by five Starling values: Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim For Greatness.
Hybrid Working
We have a Hybrid approach to working here at Starling - our preference is that you're located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we're able to interact and collaborate in person.
About the role
As the first Product Manager focused on our internal technology platform, we need your help with enabling product thinking across the platform teams and maximising the impact of the platform across the organization. Our internal platform is not just about automation and tooling, it’s about creating a well-designed self-service product that serves our technology department and enables faster, more secure and reliable software delivery.
As a Platform Product Manager at Starling, you will collaborate closely with teams across Technology and work with the Platforms Division to ensure that the platform meets the needs of our engineers and aligns with the company’s broader technical strategy as well as its risk appetite. You will act as the voice of internal customers mainly across the Technology department but also across the organisation.
You will also be well-connected with the broader Product practice. At Starling, we spend our time building products that we’re really proud of. We focus on the experience, often delivering things with real polish but sometimes making a fast strategic move. We think being good at product requires clear communication, a sense of focus, and to challenge the conventional ways of doing things. We’re open-minded when it comes to hiring, we care more about skills and attitude than specific experience or qualifications.
You will be responsible for:
- Define and execute the platform strategy: Work with platform engineering teams to develop and communicate a cohesive product roadmap, that delivers high-impact outcomes that improve developer productivity and experience.
- Gather feedback and break down problems: Actively listen to teams for pain points and feedback, gather requirements, and break down complex problems into actionable projects across teams.
- Drive adoption and advocacy: Promote the platform’s capabilities, educate teams and stakeholders and ensure widespread adoption via documentation, training and internal marketing.
- Measure success: Define key success metrics (e.g., deployment lead time)
- Ensure security and compliance: Partner with security and compliance teams to embed best practices and ensure regulatory requirements are met.
- Experience in a platform or technical product management, ideally within an internal developer platform, cloud infrastructure or DevOps environment.
- Strong understanding of software development workflows, CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes, cloud platforms (AWS & GCP) and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC).
- Strong communication skills, with the ability to provide clarity on difficult and messy problems
- Data-driven mindset with experience in making evidence-based product decisions.
Nice to haves
- Hands-on engineering experience or a technical background. Background in DevOps/backend/full-stack engineering.
- Experience working with platform-as-a-product approaches.
- Familiarity with SRE practices (Service Level Objectives - SLOs), observability and incident management.
Interview process
Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you! Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious. In general you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:
- Stage 1 - 45 mins with one of the team
- Stage 2 - 60 mins interview with two team members
- Stage 3 - 45 min final with two executives
- 25 days holiday (plus take your public holiday allowance whenever works best for you)
- An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
- Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off
- 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
- Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
- Life insurance at 4x your salary
- Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
- Generous family-friendly policies
- Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
- Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing
You may be put off applying for a role because you don't tick every box. Forget that! While we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we're always open to discussion. So, if you're excited about working with us, but aren’t sure if you're 100% there yet, get in touch anyway.
We’re on a mission to radically reshape banking – and that starts with our brilliant team. Whatever came before, we’re proud to bring together people of all backgrounds and experiences who love working together to solve problems.
Starling Bank is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Starling Bank are considered without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
By submitting your application, you agree that Starling Bank may collect your personal data for recruiting and related purposes. Our Privacy Notice explains what personal information we may process, where we may process your personal information, its purposes for processing your personal information, and the rights you can exercise over our use of your personal information.
What We Do
Hello, we’re Starling.
Banking was broken – so we decided to fix it. The vision? Fast technology, fair service and honest values. All at the tap of a phone, all the time.
We built Britain’s first digital bank.
One hard-won banking licence later, we set about giving people a new way to spend, save and manage their money (and take better care of the planet, too).
We’re changing banking for good.
Back then, we were obsessed with unravelling the knotty world of finance and solving people’s problems rather than selling them stuff. We still are.
Since then, we’ve grown. A lot.
Over three million accounts (and four account types!). A team of thousands. Headquartered in London with offices in Cardiff, Dublin, Manchester and Southampton. Five years voted Which? Recommended Provider and Britain's Best Banking Brand. Still zero branches.
Our culture is open, inclusive and focused on solving real customer problems, with an emphasis on doing the right thing, even when it’s not always the easy thing. From our approach to working together and sustainability to how we build our products, our decisions need to make the world – and Starling – a better place to be.
Everyone at Starling is essential to our mission, which is really quite simple: to solve our customer’s problems – and build the best bank in the world!
And now we're providing Starling to other banks, via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) proposition through our subsidiary Engine, using the proprietary technology platform that it uses to power our own bank.
