Data Engineer - Data Infrastructure

Starling is the UK's first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking. Our vision is fast technology, fair service, and honest values. All at the tap of a phone, all the time.

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, with innovation and collaboration at the core of everything you do.

The way to thrive and shine within Starling is to be a self-driven individual and to take full ownership of everything around you: From building things, designing, discovering, to sharing knowledge with your colleagues and ensuring 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 can interact and collaborate in person. In Technology, we’re asking that you attend the office a minimum of 1 day per week.

Our Data Environment

Our Data teams are aligned to divisions covering Banking Services & Products, Customer Identity & Financial Crime and Data & ML Engineering. Our Data teams are excited about delivering meaningful and impactful insights to both the business and, more importantly, our customers.

We are looking for talented data professionals at all levels to join the team. We value people who are engaged and care about customers, the code they write, and the contribution they make to Starling. People with a broad ability to apply themselves to a multitude of problems and challenges, who can work across teams to do great things here at Starling, to continue changing banking for good.

Responsibilities

• Building out cloud-native Warehouse and Machine Learning platforms
• Improve existing and implement new tooling in and between AWS and GCP

Requirements

• Good knowledge of programming languages such as Python or Java
• Solid understanding and practical experience with Kubernetes (Operators, Helm, etc)
• Proficiency with either AWS or GCP
• Experience with Terraform to define and manage cloud infrastructure through code
• Good practical experience with SQL and relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred)

Desirables

• Experience in SQL-based transformation workflows, particularly using DBT in BigQuery
• Familiarity with streaming data ingestion technologies (Kafka, Debezium)
• Exposure to Data management and Linux administration

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 after a chat with one of our Talent Team:

• Stage 1 - 30 mins with one of the team
• Stage 2 - Take-home challenge
• Stage 3 - 60 mins technical interview with two team members
• Stage 4 - 45 min final with two data executives

Benefits

• 25 days holiday (plus take your public holiday allowance whenever 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
• 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. We’re proud to bring together people of all backgrounds and experiences who love working together to solve problems.

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.