What if you could make debt collection fairer, kinder and smarter, and get paid to write great code doing it?
Ophelos is a London-based, AI-first fintech rebuilding how credit and collections work across Europe, backed by Intrum Group, Europe’s largest player in the space. We’re now expanding into new markets fast, and we’re hiring a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to lead the charge.
You’ll take each new market from signed deal to go-live: working directly with our colleagues at Intrum, connecting our platform to local payment providers and comms systems, and solving the real-world integration challenges that decide whether a launch succeeds. Your work will be live with clients in weeks, not years, and when the platform needs something new, you’ll be the one who makes the case that shapes the roadmap. If you want startup pace, enterprise scale and engineering that genuinely helps people, we’d love to hear from you.
The Role
Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) make Ophelos work in each market without changing what Ophelos fundamentally is. FDEs operate right at the intersection of high-calibre software engineering and real-world market expansion.
In this role, you will hold a unique position across Engineering and Markets:
- Engineering owns your growth & craft: You are held to rigorous engineering standards—code reviews, architecture design, technical excellence, line management, progression, and pay.
- Markets owns the priorities: You work hand-in-hand with named Markets counterparts to prioritize client deployments, integrations, and go-live schedules.
What You’ll Do
- Edge & Integration Engineering: Build, scale, and optimize per-market client data ingestion and egestion integrations, including APIs, file formats, validation, reconciliation, and replay mechanisms.
- Payment & Comms Integration: Connect market-specific payment providers, SMS, email, postal, and messaging vendor APIs through clean platform abstractions.
- Configuration & Localisation: Leverage and expand existing configuration surfaces to adapt Ophelos to local regulations and workflow needs.
- Market Operations & Defects: Own and resolve market-specific defects within the integration and configuration layers.
- Field-to-Roadmap Influence: Collect market needs, measure commercial impact, and author structured Product Cases stating unlock value to shape the core product roadmap.
- Client & Partner Engagement: Partner directly with Markets Success and client technical teams during onboarding across Europe.
We solve complex market expansion through structured decision-making:
- Configure First: Solve requests using existing product configuration surfaces to deliver fast, maintainable solutions.
- Integrate at the Edge: Build robust integration layers against clean, stable Abstraction APIs.
- Escalate with Impact: When core capabilities are missing, build compelling business cases to drive product platform development rather than modifying core code directly.
- Owns complete market onboarding end-to-end, acting as the primary technical authority in client discussions.
- Aggregates multi-market needs into the Abstraction API roadmap with product engineering.
- Builds reusable integration patterns, market playbooks, and mentors mid-level FDEs.
- Confidently leads technical and executive-level discussions with enterprise financial institutions.
What We’re Looking For
Core Technical Requirements
- Strong Software Engineering Skills: Production proficiency in Python and TypeScript, with Ruby experience considered a plus.
- Data Fluency Under Failure: Hands-on experience with complex schemas, data transformation, validation, reconciliation, idempotency, and replay logic.
- Third-Party Integration Experience: Demonstrated ability to evaluate, map, and integrate third-party APIs and protocols safely and reliably.
- Cross-Functional Communication: Ability to translate technical details clearly to client executives, product managers, and software engineers alike.
- Documentation & AI-First Mindset: Habitual documentation practices and comfort working in an AI-first development environment using tools like Claude Code, Codex, and OpenSpec.
- Location & Travel: Willingness to work 3 days a week from our London office in Liverpool Street and travel periodically across Europe.
Senior Experience & Domain Expertise
- Regulated Domain Experience: Background in collections, credit, payments, fintech, or adjacent regulated sectors.
- Enterprise Onboarding: Track record of navigating complex client data models and multi-stakeholder corporate integrations.
- Roadmap Influence: Demonstrated experience building business cases that successfully influenced core product roadmaps.
Why Join Us?
- High Impact: Directly shape how Ophelos scales into new European markets.
- Technical Rigour: Work with high engineering standards without sacrificing market agility.
- Career Growth: Clear progression framework within a rapidly expanding company.
- Cutting Edge AI Stack & Workflows: AI-first engineering practices and modern tools.
Ophelos is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
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