Staff Software Engineer (Team Lead) - Engine by Starling

Starling Bank; City of Westminster; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial technology company in Westminster is seeking an engineering leader to mentor high-performing teams and oversee complex projects in a cloud-native environment. You'll leverage technologies such as Java, Kubernetes, and AWS to drive innovation and technical excellence, while championing a collaborative culture that prioritizes customer impact. This role offers benefits like 33 days holiday, additional leave for birthdays, and private medical insurance.

Benefits

33 days holiday

Extra day's holiday for birthday

Life insurance at 4x salary

Private medical insurance

Perkbox membership

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading and mentoring high-performing engineering teams.
• Delivering change to critical systems in a distributed environment.
• Be a highly proficient developer, maintaining a high standard for technical and coding excellence.

Responsibilities

• Coach, mentor, and grow a high-performing team.
• Take ownership of technical challenges critical to the success of the business.
• Collaborate with clients, architects, and product owners.

Skills

Leadership

Mentoring

System Design

DevOps Practices

Collaboration

Tools

Java

Kubernetes

Terraform

AWS

GCP

Job description

Company Overview

Engine by Starling is a separate business that grew out of Starling Bank’s successful SaaS platform. We empower banks worldwide to build rapid growth businesses using our technology. Our platform is built from the ground up in Java, cloud‑native, and supports a microservice‑based architecture with Kubernetes, Terraform and Grafana for monitoring. We operate a flat structure that encourages collaboration and rapid decision‑making. All team members enjoy a supportive, inclusive culture focused on continuous improvement, technical excellence, and customer impact. The hybrid working model prefers employees to be within commuting distance of our offices for in‑person collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Coach, mentor, and grow a high‑performing team, ensuring their well‑being as they work on high‑impact solutions that bring value to Engine and our customers.
• Have the opportunity to lead multiple complex projects from inception through to run.
• Get hands‑on when needed, using your strong system design skills to help the team make smart architectural decisions and unblock complex challenges.
• Take ownership of technical challenges critical to the success of the business.
• Identify where existing tooling, applications, or processes can be enhanced and deliver innovative change.
• Collaborate with clients, solution architects, product owners, and other engineers to help meet the client goals.
• Obtain a wide and varied understanding of how banks operate around the world.
• Shape the future capabilities of Engine, including our approach, tooling, automation and architecture.
• Lead by example in your contributions to the codebase, setting a high bar for others to aim for.
• Champion a healthy engineering culture built on continuous improvement, technical excellence, and a focus on the customer.

Engineering Responsibilities

• 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.

Tech Stack

• Java – the majority of our backend codebase.
• AWS & GCP – we are cloud‑native.
• Microservice based architecture.
• Kubernetes (EKS).
• TeamCity for CI/CD with multiple production releases per day.
• Terraform and Grafana.

Interview Process

• Initial interview with a Staff or Principal Engineer – 45 minutes.
• Take home technical test to be discussed in the next interview.
• Technical & Leadership interview with some Engineers – 1.5 hours.
• Final interview with our CTO / deputy CTO / Engineering Director / Principal Engineer – 45 minutes.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading and mentoring high‑performing engineering teams.
• Delivering change to critical systems in a distributed environment.
• Be a highly proficient developer, maintaining a high standard for technical and coding excellence.
• Good understanding of DevOps practices.
• Delivering complex outcomes across multiple domains and teams.
• Working cross‑functionally with technologists from other specialties, and non‑technical stakeholders across the business.
• Coaching and mentoring members of a team to upskill and develop them in their career.
• Leading the technical delivery on large scale projects to successful completion.

Equal Opportunity Employer

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 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. We process 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.

Benefits

• 33 days holiday (including public holidays, which you can take when it 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, MrMrs Smith and Peloton.
• Generous family‑friendly policies.
• Incentives refer a friend scheme.
• 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.