Overview

At Engine by Starling, we are on a mission to find and work with leading banks worldwide who have the ambition to build rapid growth businesses on our technology. Engine is Starling's SaaS business—the technology that powered Starling—and two years ago we split out as a separate business. We have built a modern technology platform that is now available to banks and financial institutions globally, enabling innovative digital features and efficient back-office processes. We are an engineering-led company, and we value curiosity, collaboration, and ownership. Our five values are: Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim For Greatness.

Hybrid Working

We have a hybrid approach to working here at Engine. Our preference is that you are located within a commutable distance of one of our offices to enable in-person collaboration.

About Engineering at Engine by Starling

The Cross Cutting Engineering team at Engine is the backbone of our innovation. We build and maintain reliable, scalable, and maintainable infrastructure and tooling that powers our software delivery pipeline—from the first line of code to production deployment and ongoing operations. We own the lifecycle of our features, tackle complex challenges with a first-principles approach, and foster a multi-disciplinary environment where you can contribute across the platform.

As a Platform Engineer at Engine, you will help build and scale our cloud-native banking platform across multiple global cloud providers and regions. We seek engineers with a strong SRE mindset who own the entire software delivery pipeline and are passionate about creating internal tooling that empowers our technology teams to operate applications flawlessly in production.

Don’t worry if you don’t tick every box below! We value curiosity, a willingness to learn, and a desire to work across multiple disciplines. If you’re excited by the challenges of building and operating a global, cloud-native platform, we encourage you to apply.

We have a great team – read about our work with Women In Tech, a Day in the Life of a Software Engineer at Engine, and our interview with our Staff Platform Engineer.

What you’ll get to do

• Building and Scaling Cloud Infrastructure: Design, build, and maintain cloud infrastructure across multiple providers (including but not limited to GCP) and regions, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security.
• Building on Google Cloud: Contribute to the build-out and optimization of our core Engine on Google Cloud Platform using Java and Kubernetes.
• Scaling our SaaS Release Tooling: Enhance and improve our multi-tenant, multi-region SaaS release and continuous deployment systems using Java, Golang, and Terraform.
• Empowering Developers: Develop and maintain internal tooling using Java and Golang to improve developer experience and on-call efficiency.
• Automating Compliance and Security: Build automation solutions in Golang to enforce compliance and security controls across our platform.
• Driving Efficiency: Optimize the performance and reliability of our cloud environment with a focus on cost-effectiveness.
• Embracing Automation: Identify and implement automation opportunities to minimize manual processes across the platform lifecycle.
• Ensuring Security: Implement and maintain robust security practices to protect our platform and customer data.
• Championing Best Practices: Stay abreast of new technologies and industry changes, particularly in SRE and deployment automation, and share knowledge with the team.
• Maintaining Compliance: Contribute to ensuring our platform adheres to standards such as ISO27001, SOC2, and PCI-DSS.
• Collaborating and Learning: Work closely with cross-functional teams, share expertise, and contribute to our learning culture.
• Aiming for Greatness: Strive for excellence with a curious mindset.
• Documenting Solutions: Design and document scalable internal tooling clearly and comprehensively.
• Taking Ownership: Own features and improvements throughout their lifecycle.
• Participate in On-Call: Optional on-call rota to gain insights into our platform (not mandatory).

Your place within the team will depend on your strengths and interests.

Requirements

We are generally open-minded about hiring and value aptitude and attitude over specific experience or qualifications. For this role, we are looking for some specific skills. If you prefer Java-only roles, check our other Software Engineer roles.

What skills are essential

• Proven experience as a Site Reliability Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer, or similar role.
• Strong proficiency in Golang and/or Java (experience in one with the ability to learn the other).
• Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Solid understanding and practical experience with Kubernetes.
• Experience with Terraform or other Infrastructure-as-Code tools.
• Deep understanding of SRE principles and practices, including monitoring, alerting, incident management, and capacity planning.
• A strong focus on automation and eliminating manual tasks.
• Experience with building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Knowledge of security best practices in cloud environments.
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills.
• A proactive and continuous learning mindset.
• Ability to design and document technical solutions effectively.

What skills are desirable

• Experience with other cloud providers, particularly AWS.
• Contributions to open-source projects.
• Experience with database technologies, particularly Postgres.
• Familiarity with observability and monitoring systems and database monitoring, analysis, disaster recovery, and performance tuning.
• Familiarity with compliance standards such as ISO27001, SOC2, and PCI-DSS is a plus.

Our Interview process

Interviewing is a two-way process. Our interviews are conversational and we want you to have time to get to know us as much as we get to know you. In general you can expect the following after a chat with our Talent Team:

• Initial interview with an Engineer – ~45 minutes
• Take-home technical test to be discussed in the next interview
• Technical interview with some Engineers – ~1.5 hours
• Final interview with our CTO / deputy CTO – ~45 minutes

Benefits

• 33 days holiday (including public holidays)
• Extra day off for your birthday
• Annual leave increases with service; option to buy or sell up to five extra days
• 16 hours paid volunteering time per year
• Salary sacrifice, company-enhanced pension scheme
• Life insurance at 4x 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 referral program
• Perkbox membership with retail discounts and wellness platform
• Cycle to Work, Salary-Sacrificed Gym partnerships, and EV leasing programs

About Us

You may be put off applying if you don’t tick every box. We’re open to discussion about flexible working. If you’re excited about working with us but aren’t 100% sure yet, get in touch. We’re on a mission to reshape banking and bring together people of diverse backgrounds and experiences who love solving problems.

Engine by Starling is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military status, or any characteristic protected by law. By applying, you consent to us processing your personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice for recruiting and related purposes.