Staff Backend Engineer – Lead Complex FinTech Platform

Starling Bank; Cardiff; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private Medical Insurance

Pension scheme

Life insurance

Cycle to Work

Job summary

Engine by Starling is seeking a Staff Engineer to lead complex backend initiatives and shape its global banking platform. You’ll drive technical delivery, collaborate across teams, and own critical architectural decisions for scalable, secure services.

You’ll operate in a hybrid environment, mentor engineers, and contribute to tooling, automation, and new features that scale with the needs of banks worldwide. A passion for learning and excellence is essential.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering changes to critical systems in distributed environments.
• Maintains high standards for technical and coding excellence.
• Strong understanding of DevOps practices and CI/CD.
• Delivery of complex outcomes across multiple domains and teams.
• Ability to work cross-functionally with technologists and non-technical stakeholders.
• Coaching and mentoring team members to grow their careers.
• Leading technical delivery on large-scale projects.

Responsibilities

• Lead multiple complex projects from inception through to run.
• Be a technical leader, with or without a team.
• Own technical challenges critical to business success.
• Identify where tooling or processes can be enhanced and deliver changes.
• Collaborate with clients, solution architects, product owners, and engineers to meet goals.
• Understand how banks operate globally.
• Shape future capabilities including tooling, automation and architecture.
• Lead by example in code contributions and set high standards.
• Contribute to the platform and internal tooling.
• Build features and products from scratch in a configurable way.
• Share knowledge and foster a learning culture.
• Own projects, working in small teams across the bank.

Skills

Delivering change

Technical leadership

DevOps practices

Cross-functional collaboration

Coaching and mentoring

Large-scale delivery

Tools

Java

AWS

GCP

Microservice architecture

Kubernetes (EKS)

TeamCity

Terraform

Grafana

Job description

Engine by Starling is seeking a Staff Engineer to lead complex backend initiatives and shape its global banking platform. You’ll drive technical delivery, collaborate across teams, and own critical architectural decisions for scalable, secure services.

You’ll operate in a hybrid environment, mentor engineers, and contribute to tooling, automation, and new features that scale with the needs of banks worldwide. A passion for learning and excellence is essential.