Senior Software Engineer - Core Banking

Starling Bank; Cardiff; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading digital bank in Cardiff is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join their Core Banking team. The ideal candidate will have over 6 years of experience, primarily in Java. You will work in a collaborative environment, tackling complex challenges and contributing to systems that directly impact customer experiences in the banking sector. The role offers a hybrid work model and numerous benefits supporting work-life balance.

Benefits

25 days holiday plus public holidays

Annual leave increase with service

Access to wellness platform

Private Medical Insurance

Generous family-friendly policies

Qualifications

• Experience on distributed systems focused on resiliency and maintainability.
• Strong aptitude and attitude for software engineering challenges.
• Ability to work in ambiguous situations and craft elegant solutions.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain a banking platform in Java.
• Contribute to foundational banking systems processing millions of transactions.
• Participate in code reviews to ensure software quality.

Skills

Problem-solving

Team collaboration

Agile methodologies

Clean Code principles

Java proficiency

Education

6+ years experience in software engineering

Tools

Java

AWS

GCP

TeamCity

Terraform

Grafana

Job description

Social network you want to login/join with:

Senior Software Engineer - Core Banking, Cardiff

col-narrow-left

Client:

Starling Bank

Location:

Cardiff, United Kingdom

Job Category:

Other

-

EU work permit required:

Yes

col-narrow-right

Job Reference:

8b93654da4b3

Job Views:

17

Posted:

12.08.2025

Expiry Date:

26.09.2025

col-wide

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 are looking for engineers at all levels to join the team. 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 have built our entire banking platform in house and mostly in Java. We are looking for people who want to work on building the tooling that is used by our engineers on a daily basis.

Requirements

We prioritize aptitude and attitude, seeking passionate software engineers who are self-driven in ambiguous situations and committed to crafting elegant solutions for complex technical challenges.

For the most part we code in Java, but you need not be an expert when you join us! Our entire banking platform is developed in-house, predominantly in Java, with a minimalistic approach to third-party software. We believe in simple solutions adhering to Clean Code principles that promote maintainable and extensible software, automated testing and Continuous Integration & Delivery.

Experience on distributed systems with a focus on resiliency and maintainability is highly valued. We're looking for engineers with at least 6+ years of experience.

Our Core Tech Stack

The following technologies form the foundation of our platform. While expertise in all areas is not required, experience with them is a plus:

• Java, primary language for our backend codebase
• AWS & GCP - we're cloud-native
• Microservice based architecture
• RESTful APIs
• TeamCity for CI / CD
• Terraform and Grafana

The Team:

The Core Banking group is seeking passionate engineers ready to tackle complex challenges and contribute to foundational systems, powering modern banking, that process millions of transactions daily, ensuring financial integrity and regulatory compliance. It's a great opportunity to dive deep into the mechanics of banking, solving problems that directly affect customers and the bank's operational integrity.

Formed from 4 - 5 autonomous and highly driven teams, the group focuses on several key areas:

• Transaction Processing
• Interest Processing
• Treasury

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 ~ 3 hours OR Live Coding ~75-90 Minutes
• Technical interview ~ 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.