Staff Back End Engineer - Finance Tech Team

Hybrid in London or Remote within the UK

We’re looking for a Staff Engineer

You’ll be building flexibility and scalability into our product offering, payment systems and financial data pipelines.

The company

Fast, flexible finance empowers small businesses to manage their cash flow better and seize opportunities - making their business and the economy stronger as a whole. At iwoca, we do just that. We help businesses get the funds they need, when they need it, often within minutes. We’ve already made several billion in funding available to more than 100,000 businesses since we launched in 2012, and positioned ourselves as a leading Fintech in Europe. 

Our mission is to finance one million businesses. We’ll get there by continuing to make our finance ever more relevant and accessible to more businesses by combining cutting-edge technology, data science, and a 5-star customer service.

The team

The Finance tech team works closely with our CFO, Head of Capital Markets and Financial Operations Lead. Our team’s mission is to enable growth through seamless customer payments and reliable financial data. Frictionless payments are core to iwoca’s excellent customer service. Financial data is used by Finance, other business stakeholders as well as investors, so it is crucial it is up-to-date and accurate.

The Finance tech team has a Tech Lead, PM and six developers, predominantly back-end, although we have been becoming more full-stack this year. We follow Agile-inspired processes, using continuous integration and delivery, so that features go live in days or weeks, not months or years. 

The role

Responsibility and Autonomy:

• Lead projects to solve our most technically challenging business problems.

• Write high quality code that is an example to other developers, and improve overall code quality through detailed code reviews.

• Proactively identify weaknesses in our infrastructure and systems. You will lead efforts to strengthen and optimise our technology stack, ensuring it is scalable, secure, and future-proof.

Collaboration and influence:

• Build relationships with stakeholders across the Finance team and influence the business domain.

• Drive architectural improvements across the platform, in collaboration with other tech leads, to build a cohesive platform.

• Mentor junior engineers, fostering a learning environment that encourages growth and innovation within the team.

Learning and innovation:

• Develop a strong business context around payments, accounting and financial metrics, which you can apply to your work.

• Research emerging technologies: you will recommend and lead the adoption of new technologies that provide a competitive edge and improve operations.

• Perform detailed technical scoping and prototyping to support the Product Manager in feasibility testing and decision-making.

The projects

• Payment providers: We will be integrating several new payment partners to facilitate payments to and from our customers. Each new partner provides an opportunity for refactoring to make our systems more scalable and steer our architectural vision.

• Loan features: We have new loan product features planned, building on previous additions like revenue-based repayments, interest-only periods, and government guarantees. Feature work will involve updates to our Rust-based loan calculators, data models, and data warehouse.

• Data warehouse improvements: Improving the availability of data and the speed of ETL pipelines to provide analysts and other business stakeholders with effortless access to up-to-date financial data. This will involve designing new data tables and pipelines as well as enhancing existing ones.

The requirements

Essential:

• Experience leading large-scale initiatives in complex business domains

• Has been responsible for a large system, including critically assessing weaknesses and delivering an architectural vision

• Excels in engaging stakeholders and developing a deep business understanding to drive decision-making

• A strong numerical or technical background, ideally with a degree in maths, physics, computer science, engineering, or a related field.

Bonus:

• Experience mentoring junior engineers and raising the bar on code quality across a team

• Experience in finance, financial technology, payments, or accounting

• Experience with our technologies: Python, Postgres, Pandas/Polars, RabbitMQ, Rust

The salary

We expect to pay from £90,000 - £120,000 for this role. But, we’re open-minded, so definitely include your salary goals with your application. We routinely benchmark salaries against market rates, and run quarterly performance and salary reviews. 

The culture

At iwoca, we prioritise a culture of learning, growth, and support, and invest in the professional development of our team members. We value diversity in thought and skill, and encourage you to explore new areas of interest to help us improve our products and services.

The offices

We put a lot of effort into making iwoca a brilliant place to work:

• Offices in London, Leeds, and Frankfurt with plenty of drinks and snacks

• Events and clubs, like bingo, comedy nights, yoga classes, football, etc.

The benefits

• Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership 

• A private GP service (separate from Vitality) for you, your partner, and your dependents.

• 25 days’ holiday, an extra day off for your birthday, the option to buy or sell an additional five days of annual leave, and unlimited unpaid leave 

• A one-month, fully paid sabbatical after four years.

• Instant access to emotional and mental health support.

• 3% Pension contributions and share options.

• Generous parental leave and a nursery tax benefit scheme to help you save money.

• Cycle-to-work scheme and electric car scheme.

• Two company retreats a year, we’ve been to France, Italy, Spain, and further afield.

And to make sure we all keep learning, we offer:

• A learning and development budget for everyone.

• Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers.

• Access to learning platforms like Treehouse.

Useful links:

• iwoca benefits & policies

• Interview welcome pack