Staff Software Engineer (Team Lead) - Engine by Starling

Starling; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 75,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

33 days holiday including public holidays

Annual leave increase with length of service

Private Medical Insurance

Company enhanced pension scheme

Job summary

Starling is looking for a Staff Engineer to join Engine by Starling in Manchester. The ideal candidate will lead and mentor engineering teams, oversee multiple projects, and enhance technical systems. Starling values clean coding and teamwork, ensuring their engineers are equipped to tackle complex challenges.

With a hybrid working model and strong emphasis on continuous improvement, this is an excellent opportunity for someone looking to contribute to innovative banking solutions while enjoying excellent benefits and a positive work environment.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading and mentoring high-performing engineering teams.
• Delivering change to critical systems in a distributed environment.
• Adept at maintaining a high standard for technical and coding excellence.

Responsibilities

• Coach, mentor, and grow a high-performing team.
• Lead multiple complex projects from inception to run.
• Champion a healthy engineering culture focused on customer satisfaction.

Skills

Leadership and mentoring

Proficient in Java

DevOps practices

Complex problem solving

Architectural decision-making

Tools

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

At Engine by Starling, we are on a mission to find and work with leading banks all around the world who have the ambition to build rapid growth businesses, on our technology. Engine is Starling's software-as-a-service (SaaS) business, the technology that was built to power Starling Bank, and a year ago we split out as a separate business. Starling has seen exceptional growth and success, and a large part of that is down to the fact that we have built our own modern technology from the ground up. The Engine technology platform is now available to banks and financial institutions all around the world, enabling them to benefit from the innovative digital features, and efficient back‑office processes that has helped achieve Starling's success.

Hybrid Working

We have a Hybrid approach to working here at Engine - our preference is that you're located within a commutable distance of our offices so that we're able to interact and collaborate in person.

About Engineering at Engine by Starling

Engine by Starling engineers are excited about helping us deliver new features, regardless of what their primary tech stack may be. Hear more from the team in some case studies, below, and our work with Women in Tech.

• Running a Backend Team
• Day in the Life of a Software Engineer
• Check out our shiny new Engineering careers page

As a Staff Engineer you will:

• 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.

As an Engineer you will:

• 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.

Requirements

We're open‑minded when it comes to hiring and we care more about aptitude and attitude than specific experience or qualifications. For the most part we code in Java, but you need not be an expert when you join us! 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.

As a Staff Engineer you will bring the below experience or knowledge:

• 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.

The main part of our Backend 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.
• AWS & GCP - we're cloud‑native.
• Microservice based architecture.
• Kubernetes (EKS).
• TeamCity for CI/CD (with multiple production releases per day).
• Terraform and Grafana.

Interview 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 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.

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, Mr&Mrs 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.

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.

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 at Engine by 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 Engine by Starling and Starling Bank will collect your personal data for recruiting and related purposes. Our Privacy Notice explains what personal information we will process, where we will process your personal information, its purposes for processing your personal information, and the rights you can exercise over our use of your personal information.

We use AI tools to support various parts of our recruitment process, helping our team manage applications and assessments more efficiently. These tools are strictly used for support and do not replace human judgment with all final hiring decisions being made by our team. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please reach out to us.