Technical Lead (Backend) - Growth

Marshmallow; London; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking insurance brand that is redefining how newcomers to the UK are served. As a Technical Lead in the Growth team, you will spearhead engineering efforts to create scalable and reliable solutions that cater to diverse customer needs. Collaborate with a talented team to develop innovative products that challenge the status quo in the insurance industry. This role offers a unique opportunity to make a significant impact while fostering a culture of creativity and ownership. If you're passionate about technology and want to help shape the future of insurance, this is the perfect opportunity for you.

Benefits

Flexible working

Sabbatical Leave

Work From Anywhere

Competitive bonus scheme

Flexible benefits budget

Learning and development budget

Mental wellbeing support

Private health care

Medical cash plan

33 days holiday

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with strong technical leadership.
• Experience in developing and scaling microservices systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineers to build scalable and reliable customer flows.
• Mentor engineers and manage technical solutions to deliver business impact.

Skills

Software Engineering

Technical Leadership

Microservices

Java

Spring Boot

Docker

AWS

Terraform

CI/CD

DataDog

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field

Relevant certifications in software development

Tools

Docker

AWS

Spring Boot

Terraform

Job description

Help us build an everything-but-average insurance brand. Fit for the ones who step outside the norm.

We back the ones who step outside the norm.

People who find themselves on a different path, either by choice or by circumstance. The exceptions to the rules that others aren’t interested in serving. Those are the ones we want to back, in everything we do.

For the next three years, that means becoming the go-to insurer for people who are new to the UK. A huge cohort of people that the industry is not set up to support.

Not only do we cater for their immediate needs (fairer, cheaper prices), we also go above and beyond to make them feel seen and heard in everything we do.

Open roles

Technical Lead (Backend) - Growth

Location

London

Type

Full time

Department

About Marshmallow

We started Marshmallow when we found out how unfair insurance prices are for people who move to the UK. All because the industry hasn’t given this huge cohort of people a second’s thought, and isn’t set up to price them properly.

We saw an opportunity to do things differently, so we made it our mission to back the ones who step outside the norm. Since we started, we’ve helped 100,000s of people get a fairer deal on their car insurance. Using technology, we serve people that are often overlooked by financial services companies, solving important problems for people who need it most.

We know there are millions of marginalised customers out there. And we know that they face unique problems that most companies aren’t even aware of. We believe that our future is helping these people by learning about their experiences, and building our company around their needs.

How we work

We’re really proud of the culture we’ve created. We push for progress every day, because we know that we’ll only hit big milestones by taking lots of smaller steps. We’re always open to helping our team mates, sharing our ideas, experience and knowledge to solve problems together. We take risks, think creatively and experiment relentlessly to meet our customer’s needs, and never pass blame when things go wrong. We encourage people at all levels to take ownership of their work, and to be bold in challenging how we do things.

Engineering at Marshmallow

Our engineers are at the heart of the solutions. They work on product builds from start to finish, solving lots of challenges to help us build fast and scale up! Our engineers cover a range of skills across frontend, backend, full stack, iOS and android, and work alongside designers, data scientists, researchers and product managers within our product teams.

About the Growth Team you’ll be joining

The Growth team’s mission is to bring Marshmallow motor insurance to as wide an audience as possible. We do this by ensuring we have cover that meets the needs - both mainstream and niche - of a huge range of UK drivers, and by ensuring the value of Marshmallow’s offering is clearly communicated to them.

You'll be at the heart of Marshmallow's growth efforts, collaborating closely with Product, Data, and our users to deeply understand customer needs, solve challenges across our products, and deliver an inclusive, seamless, and impactful experience that drives business growth!

What you'll be doing

• Lead engineers within a product team to build scalable, reliable and fault tolerant customers flows, including midterm adjustments and cancellations
• Manage and execute ambiguous technical solutions with appropriate sense of urgency to deliver impact to the business
• Create and promote efficiency and speed within the team by improving existing solutions and developing new ones
• Partner with stakeholders to understand requirements, build and deliver functionality iteratively
• Mentor engineers from Junior to Senior levels of experience, supporting their development through feedback and sharing opportunities
• Both originate and review architectural designs to meet Marshmallow’s growing scale
• Work closely with the EM to champion and roadmap technical debt investment

What we’re looking for from you

• 8+ years of software engineering experience
• 4 years of experience as a Technical Lead
• Strong experience with developing and scaling complex microservices systems
• Previous experience with identifying, analysing, and resolving system availability, reliability, and performance issues
• Experience mentoring and guiding more engineers with a range of experience
• Strong expertise in any OO language, preferably in Java and the eagerness to learn more
• Spring Boot with Spring Cloud
• Terraform
• Docker
• Event Sourcing
• DataDog
• CI/CD
• AWS
• DynamoDB
• SNS
• SQS
• ECS
• Fargate
• RDS
• OpenSearch

Perks of the job

• Flexible working: Spend 3 days a week with your team in our new collaborative London office, and own your own working hours. The rest is up to you!
• Sabbatical Leave: Get a 4-week fully paid sabbatical after being with us for 4 years
• Work From Anywhere: 4 weeks of work from anywhere to use, with no need to come to the office
• Competitive bonus scheme: designed to reward and recognise high performance
• Flexible benefits budget: £50 per month to spend on a Ben Mastercard meaning you get your own benefits budget to spend on things you want.
• Learning and development: Personal budget for books and training courses to help you grow in your role and 2 learning days a year - on us! - to further your skillset
• Mental wellbeing support: Access therapy and mental health sessions through Oliva
• Private health care: Enjoy all the benefits Vitality has to offer, including reduced gym memberships and discounts on smartwatches
• Medical cash plan: To help you with the costs of dental, optical and physio (plus more!)
• Tech scheme: Get the latest tech for less
• Plus all the rest; 33 days holiday (including bank holidays), pension, cycle to work scheme, monthly team socials and company-wide socials every month!

Our process

• Initial call with Tech Talent Acquisition team (30/45 mins)
• Tech interview with two engineers which is centred around pair programming, systems design and operational excellence questions (1 hour 30 minutes)
• A past experience & culture interview with one of our engineering managers to check that your ways of working aligns with our processes, mission and values (1 hour 30 minutes)

We’ll let you know if you’re invited to an interview or not. But, as a small team with a lot of applications to consider, we can’t give individual feedback on each application.

Everyone belongs at Marshmallow

At Marshmallow, we want to hire people from all walks of life with the passion and skills needed to help us achieve our company mission. To do that, we're committed to hiring without judgement, prejudice or bias.

We encourage everyone to apply for our open roles. Gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or background does not affect how we process job applications.

We're working hard to build an inclusive culture that empowers our people to do their best work, have fun and feel that they belong.