Software Engineer (ML Projects)

Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! We built a new kind of bank because we knew technology had the power to help people save, spend and manage their money in a new and transformative way. We’re a fully licensed UK bank with the culture and spirit of a fast-moving, disruptive tech company. We employ more than 3,000 people across our London, Southampton, Cardiff and Manchester offices. Our technologists are at the very heart of Starling and enjoy working in a fast-paced environment that is all about building things, creating new stuff, and disruptive technology that keeps us on the cutting edge of fintech.

We operate a flat structure to empower you to make decisions regardless of what your primary responsibilities may be; innovation and collaboration will be at the core of everything you do. Help is never far away in our open culture; you will find support in your team and from across the business, we are in this together! The way to thrive and shine within Starling is to be a self‑driven individual and be able to take full ownership of everything around you: from building things, designing, discovering, to sharing knowledge with your colleagues and making sure all processes are efficient and productive to deliver the best possible results for our customers.

Our purpose is underpinned by five Starling values: 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 Starling - our preference is that you’re located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we’re able to interact and collaborate in person.

About the Role
The ML Projects team is at the forefront of bringing cutting edge machine learning to the core of what we do at Starling. As a software engineer on the ML Projects team you will work with other engineers and data scientists to design, implement and maintain features that make use of machine learning models under the hood. This could mean anything from creating a brand‑new ML‑powered feature from scratch to seamlessly integrating a new model into our core banking platform. You might find yourself designing robust infrastructure and pipelines or discovering a completely new approach to a complex problem.

We believe in empowering our engineers to take ownership and drive solutions from ideation to launch. This means you’ll have the autonomy to shape your own path, identify challenges, and collaborate with colleagues across teams to deliver impactful solutions across a range of technologies. We’re looking for a skilled software engineer who thrives on building and scaling complex systems. You should have a proven track record of delivering robust, multi‑technology applications within an enterprise environment.

We’re open‑minded when it comes to hiring and we care more about aptitude and attitude than specific qualifications. We are very open about how we deliver software. 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.

Tech Stack
Python, Java, which makes up the majority of our backend codebase, JavaScript, particularly React, which makes up our frontend, Postgres and SQL, AWS & GCP - we’re cloud‑native, TeamCity for CI / CD (lots of teams are releasing code 15-20 times per day!), Terraform, Prometheus and Grafana. If you have built and deployed complex Python applications or have hands‑on experience with generative AI and LLMs, we would be especially keen to talk. We are moving fast in the AI space and want people who are excited to help us define what comes next.

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:

• Stage 1 - 45 mins with one of the team
• Stage 2 - Take‑home challenge
• Stage 3 - 90 mins technical interview with two team members
• Stage 4 - 45 min final with two executives

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.

Equal Opportunity Employer
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.