Staff Engineer

Zopa Bank Limited; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 100,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

A financial technology company in Manchester is seeking a Staff Engineer to lead the technical vision for their Point-of-Sale systems. This role involves collaborating across teams, mentoring engineers, and making architectural decisions. The ideal candidate is proficient in Kotlin, Java, and React, with experience in leading technical initiatives. The position offers a hybrid working model, allowing for a combination of office and remote work. Join a proud award-winning team and help shape the future of finance.

Qualifications

• Strong Kotlin or Java engineering experience.
• Experience with customer-facing React or modern JS frameworks.
• Led large-scale technical initiatives across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the technical vision for Point-of-Sale systems.
• Collaborate with teams for consistency and architectural alignment.
• Mentor engineers and guide design decisions.

Skills

Kotlin

Java

React

Modern JS frameworks

Mentorship

Team collaboration

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Docker

Aurora Postgres

Kafka

Job description

Responsibilities

• Owning and evolving the technical vision for our Point-of-Sale systems
• Working across teams to drive consistency, scalability and architectural alignment
• Getting hands‑on with code (Kotlin & React) when needed, and enabling others to thrive
• Championing engineering best practices - from testing and CI/CD to observability and performance
• Supporting engineers with mentorship, pairing and design guidance
• Collaborating closely with product managers, designers and other engineering leads
• Helping define standards for service architecture, frontend quality, and integration patterns

Qualifications

• You've led large-scale technical initiatives across multiple teams or domains
• You're a strong Kotlin or Java engineer with experience in modern backend systems
• You've worked with React or modern JS frameworks on customer‑facing UIs
• You love working across boundaries - connecting dots between teams, codebases, and roadmaps
• You're comfortable with ambiguity and thrive in fast‑moving, scaling environments
• You bring others with you - explaining technical ideas clearly to both engineers and non‑engineers
• You care about building inclusive teams, scalable systems, and great customer experiences

About Zopa

We started our journey back in 2005, building the first ever peer‑to‑peer lending company. Fast forward to 2020 and we launched Zopa Bank. A bank that listens to what our customers don't like about finance and does the opposite. We're redefining what it feels like to work in finance. Our vision for a new era of banking puts people front and centre - we've built a business that empowers everyone to aim high, every day, to move finance forward. We're incredibly proud of our achievements and none of it would be possible without the amazing team here. It's not just industry awards we're winning, we've also been named in the top three UK's Most Loved Workplaces. If you embrace unconventional challenges, are unafraid to think differently and are driven to make an outsized impact, you'll thrive here at Zopa, so join us, and make it count. Want to see us in action? Follow us on Instagram @zopalife The team: We're looking for a Staff Engineer to help shape the future of our Point of Sale (PoS) products - a core domain at Zopa that connects customers with fair, transparent finance at the checkout. As a Staff Engineer, you'll play a hands‑on technical leadership role across multiple squads. You'll own the technical strategy for PoS, enabling us to scale our systems and grow our impact. From backend Kotlin services to React frontends, you'll help drive architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and ensure we're building things the right way. This is a unique opportunity to help shape technical culture and capability as we scale up in Manchester. Why join Zopa Manchester? We're building a new tech hub right in the heart of the city - with real backing, big ambition and the support of an established, award‑winning company. You'll help define the technical strategy in a business‑critical new engineering chapter in Manchester, and help shape how we grow and build the team from day one. You'll work in a product‑focused environment where engineers own their work end‑to‑end, deploy to production frequently, and see the real‑world impact of what they build. You'll also get to work with a modern tech stack: Kotlin, Kafka, Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, Aurora Postgres and more. We work hybrid, with at least 2 days a week together in our Manchester office.