Senior Reward Analyst

Location: London

Reporting to: Reward Director

Hybrid working: All Starling colleagues spend a minimum of 10 days per month in the office with flexibility to work the rest from home.

Closing date: Friday 13th February, 10am

About Starling

At Starling, we are on a mission to provide people with a fairer, smarter, and more human alternative to traditional banks. We are building a leading digital bank, driven by fast technology, fair service, and honest values. Our vision is to create a banking industry that serves everyone, which we accomplish by developing best-in-class proprietary technology, offering an exceptional customer experience, and establishing a strong, sustainable business. Our five core values – Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim for Greatness – are at the heart of everything we do, guiding our strategy and shaping our culture. We’re a branchless, largely paperless bank, committed to responsible banking, sustainability, and fostering an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive.

The Opportunity

The Senior Reward Analyst will act as a strategic engine for our international reward function, blending deep data science with compensation expertise. In our lean and agile team, you will design, own, and execute reward frameworks that scale with our rapid growth, ensuring we remain competitive in the fintech talent market while maintaining rigorous regulatory compliance.

Role overview

Operating within a high-impact, lean Reward function, this role requires a unique hybrid of finance analytics and human capital strategy, perfect for someone who views compensation through the lens of data science. As a "thinker-doer," you will bridge the gap between high-level reward strategy and granular execution. You won’t just run the numbers; you’ll build the models that define how we pay 4,000+ employees. Because we are a small team supporting a large, complex workforce, your ability to automate, scale, and provide deep insights is critical to our success.

Key Accountabilities or Responsibilities:

• Reward modelling & design: Build and maintain sophisticated models for salary bands, incentive schemes, and equity programs. You will own the architecture of our reward structures, ensuring they are scalable and data-driven.
• Pay review management: Lead the technical execution of the annual pay review cycle, automating processes where possible to ensure accuracy and efficiency.
• Market benchmarking: Lead the collation, submission and analysis of data for benchmarking surveys, conduct deep-dive market analysis using various data sources. You will translate external market trends into actionable internal insights to keep us ahead of the fintech curve. Experience of Aon and Ravio preferred.
• Regulatory reporting: Own the delivery of UK regulatory requirements, including Gender Pay Gap reporting and specific financial services remunerations disclosures.
• Strategic stakeholder advisory: Act as a strategic subject matter expert to HR Business Partners and Senior Leadership, providing data-backed recommendations on complex compensation cases and hiring offers.
• Insights & storytelling: Move beyond static reporting to provide "deep insights." You will identify trends in attrition, pay equity, and total reward ROI to influence people strategy.

Skills & experience

• Data science & analytics: Proven experience in finance analytics or a data-heavy HR role. Advanced excel is a baseline; proficiency in advanced quantitative languages such as SQL, Python, or R for modeling, and data visualisation and business intelligence tools such as Tableau, Power BI or Looker is highly preferred, as is implementing these from scratch.
• Additional technical stack: Experience with HCM systems, ideally Workday, dedicated compensation software and AI tools.
• Sector background: Extensive experience within FinTech, Financial Services, or high-growth Technology sectors is essential.
• Regulatory awareness: Strong understanding of the UK regulatory landscape and financial regulations (e.g., FCA/PRA remuneration codes) and employment law related to pay.
• Systems thinking: The ability to see the "big picture," balancing technical execution with an understanding of how reward impacts the broader business ecosystem, from talent acquisition to financial forecasting.
• Quantitative excellence & analytical rigor: A high level of numeracy and accuracy is critical; you have a commitment to and meticulous eye for detail and a "get it right first time" approach to complex calculations.
• Lean experience: Proven ability to work autonomously in a small, fast-paced team where everyone is expected to "roll up their sleeves."

Behaviours & competencies

• The thinker-doer: You are equally comfortable presenting a 3-year reward roadmap to a Director as you are auditing a 5,000-line spreadsheet.
• Execution focus: You have a bias for action. You don’t just design a process; you ensure it lands perfectly across the organisation.
• Communication: A natural ability to distill complex data into clear, actionable narratives for non-technical audiences.
• Discretion & data integrity: Experience handling sensitive pay and employee data with discretion and professionalism. You demonstrate a deep understanding of the issues and limitations of various data sources and maintain high standards of confidentiality.
• Adaptive resilience: Thrives in a "rapidly growing" environment where priorities can shift, and ambiguity is a constant.
• Strategic influence: The ability to challenge the status quo using data, persuading stakeholders through logic and insight rather than just policy.
• Resourcefulness: Thrives in a lean environment; you are a self-starter who builds their own tools and finds creative solutions to resource constraints.

Why Join Starling?

• Make an Impact: Work on projects that directly shape the future of banking and improve the financial lives of our customers. Starling is technology-led, and you’ll have the freedom to accomplish your goals in innovative ways.
• Culture of Excellence: Be part of a collaborative, empowered, and forward-thinking team. We encourage experimentation, ownership, and a relentless focus on "doing the right thing."
• Growth and Development: We are committed to your professional growth, offering opportunities to learn new technologies, take on new challenges, and own interesting things from day one.
• A Bank That Cares: We’re a Living Wage employer, committed to flexible working, and dedicated to creating a fair, open, and safe working environment with compassion and inclusion at its core.
• Comprehensive Benefits: We offer a competitive salary and a comprehensive benefits package, including:

• Company-enhanced salary sacrifice pension scheme (7% employer contribution)
• Private Medical Insurance with Vitality including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton.
• 25 days holiday (plus take your public holiday allowance whenever works best for you)
• An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
• Life Insurance at 4x your salary.
• 16 hours of paid volunteering time a year.
• Ability to buy or sell annual leave.
• Generous family-friendly policies.
• Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off
• Incentivised 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

Starling Bank is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Starling Bank 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.