Director of Client Engineering

At Tide, we help SMEs save time and money in the running of their businesses by offering business accounts and related banking services, as well as a comprehensive set of highly usable and connected administrative solutions, from invoicing to accounting. Tide is transforming the small business banking market and now supports over 2 million members globally across the UK, India, Germany, and France.

Using advanced technology, all solutions are designed with SMEs in mind. With quick onboarding, low fees, and innovative features, we thrive on making data-driven decisions to serve our mission: to help SMEs save time and money so they can get back to doing what they love.

You will lead the Client Engineering organisation, responsible for the core health and delivery of Tide’s mobile and web applications. This group comprises Core Architecture, Engineering Productivity, and Quality Engineering. Your mission is to ensure our frontend ecosystem is a competitive advantage, providing the standards and tools that allow our product teams to build with confidence and speed.

As Director of Client Engineering, you own the technical direction and standards for Tide’s frontend. We are looking for a leader who is deeply engaged in the architectural health of our applications. You will be the primary advocate for a frontend stack that is performant, maintainable, and aligned with our commercial goals.

As Director of Client Engineering you will:

• Architectural Advocacy: Partner with our Staff Engineers to drive a pragmatic frontend strategy. You will take a hands-on approach to identifying and resolving bottlenecks in our large-scale monorepo workflows, ensuring the codebase remains sustainable.
• Technical Stewardship & Efficiency: Advocate for the technical solutions that make the most sense for Tide’s business goals. You will evaluate our current stack and workforce model to ensure we are maximising engineering leverage without sacrificing the right tool for the job.
• Product Virtualisation & Observability: Advocate for systems that provide stakeholders globally with full visibility into the product experience across all configurations.
• Delivery Excellence: Be responsible for the delivery of a modern Release Engineering model. You will ensure your teams implement a comprehensive automation strategy that prioritises high-frequency, predictable deployment cycles.
• Emerging Technology & AI: Provide thought leadership on leveraging AI and agentic solutions within the client-side experience. You will explore how AI can optimise frontend performance, automate routine interactions, and drive personalised member experiences.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:

• Seasoned Leadership: You have led significant engineering organisations and are comfortable navigating the complexities of high-scale frontend architecture.
• Skilled Collaborator: You can thoughtfully debate technical trade-offs to reach the best outcome for the business.
• Frontend Pragmatist: You have a deep understanding of frontend best practices. You aren’t tied to a specific framework or a single way of working and instead focus on the best outcome for the business.
• Systems Thinking: You naturally see the connection between technical foundations and team velocity. You focus on the system-level improvements that help every product team move faster.
• Commercial Maturity: You understand that technical strategy must serve business goals. You are comfortable making and communicating trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

We use the latest iterations of Flutter and Dart with a modular architecture to build scalable applications. Our stack includes state management, dependency injection, and navigation tools to streamline development. We emphasise code generation, backend communication efficiency, and BDD testing. Monitoring, analytics, and CI/CD are powered by Firebase, DataDog, LaunchDarkly, and GitHub Actions for seamless deployment and reliability.

Our location-specific employee benefits are designed to cater to the unique needs of Tideans:

• Competitive Compensation – Competitive salary and share options.
• Time Off – Generous annual leave on top of bank holidays.
• Parental Leave – Paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave to support your family journey.
• Sabbatical – Extended unpaid and paid leave options after completing milestone years with Tide.
• Access to salary sacrifice benefits – like Nursery (could save up to 47% on fees!) and Cycle to Work discounts.
• Health Insurance – Comprehensive Private family insurance plan.
• Life & Accident Cover – Comprehensive accidental and life insurance protection.
• Mental Wellbeing – Access to therapy sessions, courses, meditations, and workshops.
• Retirement Planning – Build your retirement fund faster with Tide’s pension scheme on eligible earnings.
• Volunteering & Development Days – Paid days annually for volunteering or personal growth.
• Learning & Development – Annual budget for books, courses, coaching, and more.
• WOO (Work Outside the Office) – Work from abroad for up to 90 days annually.
• Home Office Setup – Contribution towards setting up your home office.
• Laptop Ownership – Keep your old laptop and get a new one when it’s time for a replacement.
• Snacks & Meals – Daily breakfast spread with all-day coffee, tea, and juices.

At Tide, we champion a flexible workplace model that supports both in-person and remote work to cater to the specific needs of our different teams. While remote work is supported, we believe in the power of face-to-face interactions to foster team spirit and collaboration.

At Tide, we believe that we can only succeed if we let our differences enrich our culture. Our Tideans come from a variety of backgrounds and experience levels. We celebrate diversity in our workforce as a cornerstone of our success.