Senior Java Software Engineer - Intelligent Operations

Starling; Cardiff; Hybrid; GBP 75,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private Medical Insurance

Pension Scheme

25 days holiday

Cycle to Work

Volunteer Time

Job summary

Starling is seeking an experienced backend engineer to help build and scale our digital banking platform. You will work on a range of services, primarily in Java, and collaborate with teams across AWS, Postgres, and cloud-native tooling to deliver high-quality software.

We value ownership, simplicity, and pragmatic problem-solving. The role offers hybrid working in the UK, with in-office days to collaborate and drive impact in a fast-moving fintech environment.

Qualifications

• Experience coding in Java and delivering robust, scalable software.
• Strong problem-solving and collaboration abilities.
• Ability to work across teams in a fast-moving fintech environment.

Responsibilities

• Deliver robust and scalable software with a focus on quality and reliability.
• Take ownership of features from design to deployment and monitoring.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ship end-to-end solutions.

Skills

Java

Analytical thinking

Communication

Tools

PostgreSQL

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

TeamCity

Terraform

Grafana

Job description

Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! We built a new kind of bank because we knew technology had the power to help people save, spend and manage their money in a new and transformative way.

We’re a fully licensed UK bank with the culture and spirit of a fast-moving, disruptive tech company. We’re a bank, but better: fairer, easier to use and designed to demystify money for everyone. We employ more than 3,000 people across our London, Southampton, Cardiff and Manchester offices.

Our technologists are at the very heart of Starling 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 Starling is to be a self-driven individual and be able to take full ownership of everything around you: From building things, designing, 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 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. In Technology, we’re asking that you attend the office a minimum of 1 day per week.

Our Engineering Environment

Starling engineers are excited about helping us deliver new features, regardless of what their primary tech stack may be. Hear from the team in our latest blogs or our case studies with Women in Tech.

We value people being engaged and caring about customers, caring about the code they write and the contribution they make to Starling. 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 Starling, to continue changing banking for good.

We’re seeking a highly motivated and experienced engineer to play a key role in our Customer Service Engineering Group. You should have a strong understanding of delivering robust and scalable code, applying best practices, and a proven track record of delivering high-quality software. Experience with AWS and Postgres is highly desirable.

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 though we are looking for someone with at least 7 years of commercial experience with Java, you need not be an expert! 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.

The main part of our 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
• Postgres
• AWS & GCP - we’re cloud-native
• Distributed service based architecture
• Kubernetes (EKS)
• TeamCity for CI / CD (lots of teams are releasing code 15-20 times per day!)
• Terraform and Grafana

Our 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 phone call - ~45 minutes

• Take home technical test to be discussed in the technical interview - ~3 hours

• Technical interview - ~1.5 hours

• Final Interview - ~40 minutes

• 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 & group income protection

• 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

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.

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 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 Starling 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.