At , we are on a mission to find and work with leading banks all around the world who have the ambition to build rapid growth businesses, on our technology.
Engine is Starling's software-as-a-service (SaaS) business, the technology that was built to power , and a year ago we split out as a separate business.
has seen exceptional growth and success, and a large part of that is down to the fact that we have built our own modern technology from the ground up. This SaaS technology platform is now available to banks and financial institutions all around the world, enabling them to benefit from the innovative digital features, and efficient back-office processes that has helped achieve Starling's success.
Our technologists are at the very heart of Engine and enjoy working in a fast-paced environment that is all about building things, creating new stuff, and disruptive technology that keeps us on the cutting edge of fintech. We operate a flat structure to empower you to make decisions regardless of what your primary responsibilities may be, 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, we are in this together!
The way to thrive and shine within Engine is to be a self-driven individual and be able to take full ownership of everything around you: From building things, designing, and discovering to sharing knowledge with your colleagues and making sure all processes are efficient and productive to deliver the best possible results for our customers. Our purpose is underpinned by five 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 Engine - our preference is that you're located within a commutable distance of Sydney so that we're able to interact and collaborate in person.
About the role
We’re looking for a Principal Backend Software Engineer to help build out our engineering team in Sydney, to work on the Engine Platform and make our existing features work for banks all over the world as well as building new features from scratch that Starling hasn’t released in the UK market.
This is an exciting opportunity to build a team from scratch and grow the Starling culture into a new region.
Engine by Starling engineers are excited about helping us deliver new features, regardless of what their primary tech stack may be. Hear more from the team in some case studies, below, and our work with .
We value people being engaged and caring about customers, caring about the code they write and the contribution they can make to banking around the world. People with a broad ability to apply themselves to a multitude of problems and challenges, who can work across teams do great things here at Engine, to continue changing banking for good.
What you'll get to do:
- Support, grow, mentor and lead the team through being their manager
- Work with our clients to understand their needs and help solve their problems
- Define best practices for Technology and enable quality work
- Understand client needs and architect solutions to solve for many future clients
- Help us grow the team in Sydney
- Contribute to our award winning platform and internal tooling
- Build new features and products from scratch in a configurable way
- Share your knowledge with those around you, contributing to our learning culture
- Own your projects, working in small teams across the bank to collaboratively deliver
- Aim for greatness in everything you do, staying curious and inquisitive
- Be part of a scaling team and organisation as we change banking for good
We’re open-minded when it comes to hiring and we care more about aptitude and attitude than specific experience or qualifications. We are very open about how we deliver software. For the most part we code in Java and this is what we have built our entire banking platform on. We believe in clean coding, simple solutions, automated testing and continuous deployment. If you care enough to find elegant solutions to difficult technical problems, we’d love to hear from you.
About you:
- a capable tech lead
- able to understand complex systems and design solutions to difficult problems
- comfortable talking to external teams to collaborate on delivering for clients
- an experienced Java engineer with cloud experience
The main part of our Backend Tech Stack is listed below, we don't ask that you have experience in all of this, but if you do, that's great!
- Java, which makes up the majority of our backend codebase
- AWS & GCP - we're cloud-native
- Microservice based architecture
- Kubernetes (EKS)
- TeamCity for CI / CD (lots of team are releasing code 15-20 times per day!)
- Terraform and Grafana
Our 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:
- Initial interview with a Principal Engineer - ~45 minutes
- Take home technical test to be discussed in the next interview
- Technical interview with some Engineers - ~1.5 hours
- Final interview, ideally face to face in Sydney, with our CTO / deputy CTO ~45 minutes
- 25 days holiday. You’ll also get your birthday on us
- The option to opt-out of public holidays
- The option to buy/sell up to 5 days of annual leave a year
- 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
- Enhanced Pat & Mat leave
- Perkbox
- Length of service increased annual leave
- Superannuation
About us
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.
Engine by Starling is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Engine by Starling 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.
When you provide us with this information, you are doing so at your own consent, with full knowledge that we will process this personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice. By submitting your application, you agree that Engine by Starling and Starling Bank will collect your personal data for recruiting and related purposes. Our Privacy Notice explains what personal information we will process, where we will process your personal information, its purposes for processing your personal information, and the rights you can exercise over our use of your personal information.
Top Skills
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.
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