Platform Engineer - Engine by Starling

At Engine by Starling, we are on a mission to find and work with leading banks all around the world who have the ambition to build rapid growth businesses, on our technology. Our software-as-a-service (SaaS) business, Engine, is the technology that was built to power Starling, and two years ago we split out as a separate business.\n\nAs a company, everyone is expected to roll up their sleeves to help deliver great outcomes for our clients. We are an engineering-led company and we’re looking for people who are excited by the potential for Engine’s technology to transform banking in different markets around the world.\n\nOur purpose is underpinned by five values: Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim For Greatness.\n\nWe have a Hybrid approach to working here at Engine - 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.\n\nThe Cross Cutting Engineering team at Engine is the backbone of our innovation. We're dedicated to building and maintaining the reliable, scalable, and maintainable infrastructure and tooling that powers our entire software delivery pipeline – from the first line of code to seamless production deployment and ongoing operations.\n\nAs a Platform Engineer at Engine, you'll be at the forefront of building and scaling our cutting-edge cloud-native banking platform across multiple global cloud providers and regions.\n\nWe're looking for engineers with a strong SRE mindset, who embrace ownership of the entire software delivery pipeline, and are passionate about building internal tooling that empowers our technology teams to operate their applications flawlessly in production.\n\nDon't worry if you don't tick every box below! We value curiosity, a willingness to learn, and a desire to work across multiple disciplines. If you're excited by the challenges of building and operating a global, cloud-native platform, we encourage you to apply.\n\nWhat you’ll get to do?\n\n Building and Scaling Cloud Infrastructure: Design, build, and maintain our cloud infrastructure across multiple providers (including but not limited to GCP) and regions, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security.\n\n Building on Google Cloud: Contribute to the build-out and optimisation of our core "Engine" on Google Cloud Platform using Java and Kubernetes.\n\n Scaling our SaaS Release Tooling: Enhance and improve our multi-tenant, multi-region SaaS release and continuous deployment systems using Java, Golang, and Terraform at its core.\n\n Empowering Developers: Develop and maintain internal tooling using Java and Golang to improve developer experience and on-call efficiency.\n\n Automating Compliance and Security: Build automation solutions in Golang to enforce compliance and security controls across our platform.\n\n Driving Efficiency: Optimise the performance and reliability of our cloud environment with a strong focus on cost-effectiveness.\n\n Embracing Automation: Identify and implement automation opportunities to minimise manual processes across the platform lifecycle.\n\n Ensuring Security: Implement and maintain robust security practices to protect our platform and customer data.\n\n Championing Best Practices: Stay abreast of new technologies and industry changes, particularly in SRE practices and deployment automation, and share your knowledge with the team.\n\n Maintaining Compliance: Contribute to ensuring our platform adheres to relevant industry standards such as ISO27001, SOC2, and PCI-DSS.\n\n Collaborating and Learning: Work closely with cross-functional teams, share your expertise, and contribute to our vibrant learning culture.\n\n Aiming for Greatness: Strive for excellence in everything you do, maintaining a curious and inquisitive mindset.\n\n Documenting Solutions: Design and document scalable internal tooling clearly and comprehensively.\n\n Taking Ownership: Own features and improvements throughout their entire lifecycle.\n\n Participate in on-call: The option to join our on-call rota (not mandatory!) to deal with interesting technical issues and gain deep insights into our platform's behavior.\n\nYour place within the team will depend on your individual strengths and interests.\n\nRequirements\n\nWe are generally open-minded when it comes to hiring and we care more about aptitude and attitude than specific experience or qualifications. For this role, we are looking for some specific additional skills - if you prefer Java only roles be sure to check out our other Software Engineer roles.\n\nWhat skills are essential\n\n Proven experience as a Site Reliability Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineer or similar role.\n\n Strong proficiency in Golang and/or Java (if you have experience with only one of these that's fine, we'll expect you to pick up the other up whilst you're here!).\n\n Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP).\n\n Solid understanding and practical experience with Kubernetes.\n\n Experience with Terraform or other Infrastructure-as-Code tools.\n\n Deep understanding of SRE principles and practices, including monitoring, alerting, incident management, and capacity planning.\n\n A strong focus on automation and a passion for eliminating manual tasks.\n\n Experience with building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.\n\n Knowledge of security best practices in cloud environments.\n\n Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.\n\n Strong collaboration and communication skills.\n\n A proactive and continuous learning mindset.\n\n Ability to design and document technical solutions effectively.\n\nWhat skills are desirable\n\n Experience with other cloud providers, particularly AWS.\n\n Contributions to open-source projects.\n\n Experience with database technologies, particularly Postgres.\n\n Familiarity with observability and monitoring systems, and a solid understanding of database monitoring, analysis, disaster recovery, and performance tuning.\n\n Familiarity with compliance standards such as ISO27001, SOC2, and PCI-DSS is a plus.\n\nOur Interview process\n\nInterviewing 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.\n\nIn general, you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:\n\n Initial interview with an Engineer - ~45 minutes\n\n Take-home technical test to be discussed in the next interview\n\n Technical interview with some Engineers - ~1.5 hours\n\n Final interview with our CTO/deputy CTO - ~45 minutes\n\nBenefits\n\n 33 days holiday (including public holidays, which you can take when it works best for you)\n\n An extra day’s holiday for your birthday\n\n Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off\n\n 16 hours paid volunteering time a year\n\n Salary sacrifice, company-enhanced pension scheme\n\n* Life insurance