Senior Backend Engineer, Marshmallow
New Products
Bonus scheme available
1-3 days a week in office
Accessible, tech-enabled insurance for those who step outside the norm
Open for applications
Accessible, tech-enabled insurance for those who step outside the norm
501-1000 employees
Open for applications
Bonus scheme available
1-3 days a week in office
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To back those who find themselves on a different path, either by choice or by circumstance, helping the exceptions to the rules that others aren’t interested in serving.
Role
Who you are
- We're looking for Engineers who can work well in ambiguity, work autonomously with a self-starter attitude and apply their excellent skills and experience to make sensible trade-offs
- This role requires autonomy, drive, curiosity and collaboration
- 6+ years of software engineering experience
- Expertise in Java and Spring and the eagerness to learn more
- Experience with developing and scaling complex microservices systems
- Previous experience with identifying, analysing, and resolving system availability, reliability, and performance issues
- Experience mentoring and guiding more junior members of the team
- Nice to have: experience working in a high growth start-up environment, frontend development with React, Typescript
- To meet our regulatory obligations as an FCA-authorised financial services company, we need to do some background checks on all new hires. That means carrying out a DBS check and making sure you don't have any live criminal proceedings. Feel free to ask our Talent Acquisition team if you have any questions about this!
What the job involves
- Our engineers are at the heart of the solutions. They work on product builds from start to finish, solving lots of challenges to help us build fast and scale up! Our engineers cover a range of skills across frontend, backend, full stack, iOS and android and work alongside designers, data scientists, researchers and product managers within our product teams
- Our product teams include: the Growth team, the Efficiency team, and the Claims team (to name a few!) Each team sets its own roadmap and actively pushes our codebase forward
- This is a unique opportunity to make a large customer-centric impact working on a brand-new greenfield product offering for Marshmallow focused on solving a really key problem for our customer base
- You will be embedded in a completely new team within Marshmallow who will be close-knit, highly collaborative and impact focussed
- While the team is small and will work mostly independently whilst building out the 0-1 solution, we support one another to get to the best outcomes and to build the right solutions
- Working in a new greenfield team launching a brand new product which will have a real impact on our customers’ lives
- Contribute to building solutions to ambiguous product problems with appropriate sense of urgency to deliver impact within the team
- Creates and promotes efficiency and speed within the team by autonomously solving problems, designing and implementing effective solutions
- Partners with stakeholders to understand requirements, build solutions, deliver functionality, write automation tests and build continuous delivery pipelines all the way through to deployment, monitoring and supporting these systems in production
- Help us evolve our architecture to optimise for product delivery speed
- Our Tech Stack:
- Java 23
- Spring Boot
- AWS: (RDS, Fargate, S3, KMS, IAM, VPC, Kinesis, SQS, SNS)
- IaC with Terraform
- CI/CD with Teamcity
- Docker
- Observability with Datadog and Sentry
Application process
- Initial video call with a Tech Talent Acquisition partner (30 - 45 mins)
- Tech interview with two members of our BE engineering team which is centred around systems design and technical questions (1 hour 30 minutes)
- A behaviour culture and past experience interview with our Chief Architect to check that your ways of working aligns with our processes, mission and values (1 hour)
- We’ll let you know if you’re invited to an interview or not. But, as a small team with a lot of applications to consider, we can’t give individual feedback on each application
Salary benchmarks
Our take
For many ordinary people, insurance can be inaccessibly expensive. Marshmallow solves this problem by using data and technology to offer fairer coverage for car and van owners.
Car insurers generally quotes drivers according to population data, and many drivers are overcharged due to age and demographic. By leveraging data and proprietary technology, Marshmallow can offer more accurate and personalised quotes delivered in minutes, meaning lower fees for drivers. Naturally, this approach has proven popular, with Marshmallow garnering impressive reviews and accolades since it first launched.
The insurtech space is becoming increasingly competitive, and more and more tech companies are moving into the car insurance space, so the company is currently looking to expand into other insurance areas. Marshmallow’s unicorn status is a clear indicator of the company’s ongoing success and scalability, and will help to facilitate this diversification.
For now, the company is focused on helping those outside the norm, such as those who have uprooted their lives and moved to the UK. But in the future, it hopes to expand to any group of people who are unfairly marginalised and whose problems Marshmallow is uniquely positioned to solve.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Employee endorsements
Open and honest communication
"At Marshmallow information is 'over-shared' and this starts from the CEOs and continues through the organisation. People across the business are..."
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Sep 2021
$83m
SERIES B
Nov 2020
$30m
SERIES A
Total funding: $118.2m
Company benefits
- Flexible working - Manage your own time and choose where to work from (in the office, at home, or a little bit of both). Just make sure your team is happy too.
- Ben benefits - Get your hands on your flexible benefits budget with the Ben Mastercard and spend it wherever you want.
- Competitive bonus scheme - designed to reward and recognise high performance 🌟
- Private healthcare - We want to support everyone’s wellbeing at Marshmallow, which is why we offer private healthcare insurance with Vitality.

- Cycle to work scheme - We’re registered under the Cycle-to-Work scheme, so you can buy a new bike tax-free. Lycra shorts optional.
- Mental wellbeing - We have partnered with Oliva to offer mental health support and make therapy sessions more accessible.
- Learning and training - Personal budgets for books and training courses to help you grow in your role. Weekly book clubs and learning sessions. Plus 2 days a year - on us! - to further your skillset.
- Company socials - We give all of our teams monthly budgets to get to know each other better outside of work. Plus we have company-wide socials every two weeks, themed parties, and more.
Company values
- We have a bias for action - We carry urgency into our every day, knowing that only by making daily progress can we drive long-term growth
- We are challenging and honest - We optimise for truth and progress, which requires us to never shy away from difficult conversations with each other
- We take ownership - We take on challenges, and put our hands up when things go wrong
- We are selfless - We work hard, together and without ego
- We are bold - To serve our customers best, we experiment relentlessly, make tough decisions and go where others won’t
- We simplify for success- We don’t overcomplicate or try to be too clever. Less is more
Company HQ
Old Street, London, UK
Articles
Leadership
Oliver Kent-Braham
(Co-CEO)Previously worked in Growth & Partnerships at Yoti and Leveraged Finance at Investec. Previously founded Reel Money.
David Goaté
(Chief Architect)Previously Software Architect at Yoti, also worked as a software engineer at Homeseller, Cognitran and IG.
Alexander Kent-Braham
(Co-CEO)Previously worked in Product at Yoti. Also co-founded Reel Money and was an Analyst at hedge fund QCM.
People progressing
Joined as Software Engineer, being promoted to Technical Team Lead after 10 months.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Marshmallow
- To solve big problems, we need exceptional people from all walks of life. We're creating a culture where everyone feels empowered to bring their unique perspectives and boldest ideas to the table. Belonging - As a community, we foster an environment where everyone feels supported and safe to bring their authentic self to work. Recognition - We recognise and celebrate the differences in our experiences, understanding that our unique contributions help us collectively deliver our best work. Influence - We’re empowered to share our voice and have influence. We value diversity of thought, knowing we are better through our collective perspectives and experiences.
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