Senior Engineering Manager

We’re on a mission to make money work for everyone. We’re waving goodbye to the complicated and confusing ways of traditional banking. After starting as a prepaid card, our product offering has grown a lot in the last 10 years in the UK. As well as personal and business bank accounts, we offer joint accounts, accounts for 16-17 year olds, a free kids account and credit cards in the UK, with more exciting things to come beyond. Our UK customers can also save, invest and combine their pensions with us. With our hot coral cards and get-paid-early feature, combined with financial education on social media and our award winning customer service, we have a long history of creating magical moments for our customers! We’re not about selling products - we want to solve problems and change lives through Monzo.

About the Role

This role is for a Senior Engineering Manager where you’ll be a manager of managers. You will be leading across multiple teams in an org of around 20-30 people. We’re expanding and your role as the Senior EM will be to grow and build new squads as needed. Your direct reports will include Tech Leads, Senior Engineers and 2-3 Engineering Managers.

Senior Engineering Managers at Monzo are part of cross-functional, autonomous teams and groups. Our teams are mission driven, and typically include Product Managers, backend, web and mobile engineers as well as data scientists, designers and subject matter experts relevant to that mission. Teams are organised into groups, and then collectives - we aim to keep our line management structure as shallow as possible, and for teams to directly own decision making relevant to their work.

Senior Engineering Managers are accountable for the technical and delivery outcomes for their area - that means supporting and developing best in class engineering talent, as well as creating an inclusive team environment for people to do their best work. You’ll be responsible for structuring, organising, supporting and challenging your team to deliver on their mission.

You can read more on the expectations of Senior Engineering Managers in our Progression Framework.

Is this role right for you?

While this is not a role which requires hands-on-coding, we are looking for an experienced manager who has a strong technical and delivery background and has worked as a software engineer in previous roles.

• Delivery and Execution: Enjoys taking accountability for delivery across your squad(s), collaborating with the Technical Lead and Product Manager.
• Engineering and Operational Excellence: Actively fosters a high bar for engineering excellence within your teams. You’re accountable for the technical outcomes your teams deliver alongside individual engineer performance and growth, so holding a high bar (and clearly articulating your expectations) is key.
• People Leadership: Has experience directly managing at least 2-3 Engineering Managers and leading orgs of around ~20 engineers. You can support, coach and develop them through their career with regular 1:1s and continuous feedback.
• Technical Influence: Partners with senior engineers to drive technical initiatives that raise the bar for our engineering practices.
• Stakeholder Relationships: Builds strong stakeholder relationships with other teams, and creates a focus space for engineers to do their best work.
• Organisational Wide Impact: Collaborates with the wider engineering organisation to contribute to company-wide best managerial and technical practices and standards.

We consider your application across all open EM roles at Monzo independent of which role you’ve applied for, so if you’ve recently applied to a similar role at Monzo and have been unsuccessful, please wait 6 months before applying again.

How we work

Our main tech hub is in London, but our engineers live everywhere in the UK— from Brighton to the Western Isles. We value meeting in person but there’s no pressure to come into the office, even if you’re nearby. We believe you’ll do your best work if you are where you want to be. If you live outside of London and we ask you to come into the office, Monzo will support you with the costs. Our offices are naturally social, especially Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, which happen to line up with our twice-weekly Monzo lunches & treat Thursdays. Teams also schedule time together often for work and play – in or around the office, or online. Set up a work schedule that delivers impact and fits your life.

At Monzo, we value connections, flexibility, and wellbeing. We keep our meetings during core hours to stay connected and believe in maintaining work/life balance. You’ll be empowered to manage your work in a way that suits you and your team, giving you the freedom for children drop-offs and pick-ups, walking your dog or adventurous cat, avoiding peak commuting times or gym slots, appointments, or supporting your family in an emergency. Work the way that works for you with Monzo!

The interview process:

After an initial informal recruiter call you go through two main stages:

• Initial Call (1 hour): You’ll meet with one of our Senior Engineering Managers or Engineering Directors. They’ll ask you about your previous experience, in particular people leadership, product delivery and technical leadership. They’ll ask example based questions (‘Tell me about a time when…’)
• Loop Stage (3 hours 30 mins): The Loop stage consists of 3 x 60 min interviews that take place over 1-2 days (depending on your availability) and one 30 minute reverse interview. The Loop is one stage and the interviews in this stage are:
• Team and Org Management (1 hour): An example based interview with 1-2 of our engineering leaders. They’re interested to hear examples from your previous experience on the teams you’ve led, how you’ve shaped and partnered with product, and the impact you had.
• System Design (1 hour): You’ll partner with a Staff or Principal Engineer on a technical whiteboarding exercise.
• Behavioural (1 hour): Similar to Team and Org Management, this is an example based interview with 1-2 Engineering Leaders. This interview focuses on your people leadership style and core behaviours as an Engineering Manager.
• Chat with an Engineering Leader (30 mins): At Monzo, we believe interviews are a two-way street. This will be your opportunity to ask us any questions about Monzo, engineering leadership or our teams – whatever's on your mind.

All things going well, you’ll have completed the hiring process. Our average process takes around 3-4 weeks but we will always work around your availability. You’ll have the chance to speak to our recruitment team throughout the process.

What’s in it for you:

£138,000 - £175,000 + Equity + Benefits. We can help you relocate to the UK. We can sponsor visas. This role can be based in our London office, but we’re open to distributed working within the UK (with ad hoc meetings in London). We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team. Learning budget of £1,000 a year for books, training courses and conferences. And much more, see our full list of benefits.

Equal opportunities for everyone. Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we’re making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, we’re embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. You can read more in our blog, Diversity and Inclusion Report and Gender Pay Gap Report.

We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status. If you have a preferred name, please use it to apply. We don't need full or birth names at application stage.