Director of Platform Engineering, UnderwriteMe
Salary not provided
+ Bonus Schemes
AWS
Kubernetes
Terraform
Datadog
Senior and Expert level
London
1+ day a week in office
Building software products for the life insurance market
Be an early applicant
Building software products for the life insurance market
101-200 employees
FintechB2BMachine LearningSaaSProduct
Be an early applicant
Salary not provided
+ Bonus Schemes
AWS
Kubernetes
Terraform
Datadog
Senior and Expert level
London
1+ day a week in office
101-200 employees
FintechB2BMachine LearningSaaSProduct
Company mission
Using tech to ensure everyone who wants life insurance can access it.
Role
Who you are
- You are technically great, with a strong understanding of modern platform engineering and engineering leadership
- You can sit with engineers and debate technical concepts but are also capable of describing these concepts to non engineers clearly
- You thrive on moving between different levels of detail depending on what the situation needs
- You understand engineering leadership best practices with regards to creating autonomous cross functional teams and how to measure their success
- You are a visionary who drives the team, providing clarity and guidance to enable us to move at speed
- You believe in building out a modern engineering platform that can support the needs of engineers
- You use customer research (i.e. engineer feedback / interviews etc) and your own experience to shape the future direction of the platform
- You see the platform as a product and operate like a Product Manager of that product
- You care deeply about creating a platform that enables engineers to move quickly - more so than what technology we are using to do this
- You are a creative problem solver
- Working with your team, direct reports and peers, you directly solve problems
- You care more about solving the problem than simply talking about it
- You look for creative solutions to problems, understanding when to focus on dealing with the root causes and when a quick fix will suffice
- You are a curious coach
- You love helping others to improve
- Your curiosity means you want to understand why things work the way that they do, before you look to improve them
- Your coaching extends across all your relationships and you’re comfortable coaching people both within and outside of engineering
- You have a growth mindset
- You respectfully challenge the status-quo
- You are continually looking to improve yourself and your team
- You actively seek out and give feedback and do this in a way that builds strong relationships with your team and peers
- You think about working iteratively, using experiments and data to drive how you make decisions
- You thrive in a fast paced environment with large amounts of uncertainty
- You are comfortable working to transform an organisation, accepting this means that everything is not working perfectly today
- You are an experienced platform engineering leader, building an engineering platform on a cloud based infrastructure, an extra bonus if you have done this on AWS using Kubernetes
- You are an expert with IaC (bonus if its Terraform) and you have a passion for automating everything
- You have a strong grounding in core computer science principles and software engineering practices
- You understand the full software engineering lifecycle and the role that platform engineering plays in this
- You don’t just spin up infrastructure and tune out when an engineer mentions that their build isn’t working well
- You care about creating an environment in which engineers can thrive and get enjoyment from making people’s lives easier
- You have experience in a regulated environment, ideally working with standards such as ISO 27001 / SOC2 and know how to structure a platform and process to meet the needs of those standards
- You are comfortable facing off to internal risk and compliance teams and acting as a subject matter expert in external audits
- You are comfortable working on disaster recovery and business continuity planning
- You’ve been working in teams following modern software delivery methodologies, such as agile, lean, and DevOps
- Extra bonus - You’ve built SaaS products and understand the patterns used to build them
What the job involves
- We are looking for a Director of Engineering to join us to lead Engineering for our underlying engineering platform
- We are going through a transformation in our platform, and this role will play a leadership role in getting us from where we are today to our future target state
- Our two products currently run on a platform that has gone through some transformation, but the platform does not yet fulfil our vision of creating a delightful developer experience enabling quick, iterative delivery of value to our customers
- All of our infrastructure runs on AWS, with most of our applications being JVM based and running on Kubernetes
- We use DataDog for centralised logging, monitoring and alerting and GitLab for source control
- We generally already have a modern tech stack in place - but we’re not yet as effective as we need to be in getting the most value from this
- You will lead engineering for our platform engineering squad, reporting directly into the VP Engineering (who looks after all engineering for UnderwriteMe)
- You will play a second role in acting as a leader of our underlying engineering platform, providing a vision for the future direction of our platform
- We operate using a hybrid model with some engineers in a centralised platform team and some directly in our products
- Your role will be to enable both the creation of a single, consistent paved road for our teams, but also to provide knowledge and expertise within our product squads
- As the leader of the platform engineering squad, provide metrics and progress on our transformation to our Senior Leadership Team
- You will also be a member of the Engineering leadership at UnderwriteMe, collaborating with other engineering leaders, working on improving our overall engineering function
- Your day to day will involve creation and execution of a roadmap of improvements that move our platform towards your defined target state
- You will support your team, acting as a mentor and coach, helping the delivery of your vision
- You will introduce new technologies where needed and remove technologies that provide little additional value
- You look to optimise the cost of our platform, making this transparent and visible to teams and driving down our overall cost of delivering our products to customers
- You will be comfortable acting as part of an out of hours, on call rota, supporting our transformation towards a ‘you build it, you run it’ target state
Salary benchmarks
Our take
UnderwriteMe was founded in 2012 to shake up the UK insurance sector. At the time, life insurance underwriting was an inefficient process typified by a fractured market, slow processes, and non-standardised evidence. UnderwriteMe released its Underwriting Engine which untangled and greatly accelerated the process, allowing it to grow to become the leading provider of insurance tech products across Europe, Asia, and North America.
As a tech-first company, UnderwriteMe has continued to develop its product, innovating to remain at the forefront of the insurance tech sector. It has moved into AI, with its Text Mining Lab that uses natural language processing to read unstructured medical reports and automatically convert them into usable data. It has also formed major strategic partnerships to improve the product, one example being with United Healthcare Group, allowing medical screening requests to be sent electronically. This further shortens the underwriting decision-making process for users of the platform.
Its focus on innovation and strategic partnerships has yielded success, generating significant buzz in the insurance sector and more than 50% year-on-year growth. Moving ahead it will continue to develop its product, doubling down on AI-augmented decision-making tools to further increase the efficiency of the underwriting process.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
19% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Employee endorsements
Career progression
"Still being fairly small (150 people) and scaling means people can make an impact and be involved in projects, uncover new opportunities and..."
Company benefits
- Life Assurance - The Company provides a lump sum benefit payment, 9x salary
- Group Income Protection - The aim is to provide an income to employees if they are unable to work long-term, as a result of an illness or injury. 75% of basic salary
- Private Medical Insurance - Provided for all employees via Bupa Healthcare
- Stakeholder Pension Scheme - Up to 15%. The Company offers a group stakeholder pension to aid employees in planning for their future
- Money towards remote setup - £350 for you to be set up and comfortable working remotely
- Employee Assistance Programme - Providing employees with third-party advice on a variety of topics including mental health
- Subsidised Gym Membership - The company subsidises memberships to any gym of employees' choice
- Enhanced Maternity and Paternity scheme
- Bonus Scheme - based on individual and company performance
- 30 days a year working remotely - The opportunity to work abroad or from your home country (for those who may have moved country). This can be broken up through the year
- 24/7 GP Consultation - Through the Employee Assistance Programme, WeCare, employees and their families have access to a UK-based GP anytime it's needed
- Cycle 2 Work Scheme - Enables employees to purchase cycling equipment tax-free by paying for it in installments through salary sacrifice deductions
- 25 days holiday plus company closure for wellbeing days (4x extra days off in 2023)
Company values
- Impact Oriented: Driven by meaningful results, prioritising actions that deliver significant outcomes and contribute to team success. Motivated by value creation and business impact, not titles or status.
- Entrepreneurial: Demonstrate initiative and a proactive approach to identifying and seizing the right opportunities. Show resilience in the face of challenges and maintains a bias for action.
- Curiosity: Exhibit a strong desire to learn and understand new concepts. Approach problems with creativity and persistence, consistently seeking effective solutions.
- Technically Great: Possess a deep understanding of relevant technical skills and knowledge applicable to job role . Apply technical expertise effectively to solve complex issues.
- Strategic Thinkers: Demonstrate an understanding of the broader impact of their role and decisions. Effectively balances immediate actions with strategic planning to ensure alignment with medium-term and long-term organisational objectives.
- Adaptability: Open to feedback and willing to learn from others. Show a growth mindset and the ability to adapt and improve.
Company HQ
St Katharine's & Wapping, London, UK
Articles
Leadership
James Tait
(CEO, not founder)Was a Non-Executive Director at UnderwriteMe before stepping up to the CEO position in 2020. Before that was Head of Protection, Europe for UnderwriteMe's parent company, Pacific Life Re.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at UnderwriteMe
Nana (Gyasi)
- Fostering cultural awareness in our organisation
- Enhancing the diversity within our Underwrite Me team
- Reviving our learning curriculum to enhance DE&I knowledge
- Building on our existing affinity groups and DE&I initiatives
- Optimising our hiring practices and removing bias
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