Director of Engineering, Zopa
Salary not provided
Senior and Expert level
London
3 days a week in office (Canary Wharf, CA)
Financial solutions for borrowers and savers
Posted today
Financial solutions for borrowers and savers
501-1000 employees
FintechB2CLendingFinancial Services
Posted today
Salary not provided
Senior and Expert level
London
3 days a week in office (Canary Wharf, CA)
501-1000 employees
FintechB2CLendingFinancial Services
Company mission
To create simple, fair and honest financial products that have the customer's needs at heart.
Role
Who you are
- You’ll bring strong people leadership, technical credibility and a genuinely data-led approach to understanding what’s working and where we can improve, while helping us push further in areas such as AI-enabled engineering
- This is an opportunity for an experienced engineering leader to take real ownership, drive substantial change and clearly see the results of the decisions they make
- You’re an experienced engineering leader who has led sizeable teams and knows how to build a high-performing organisation through strong Engineering Managers, effective hiring, performance management and people leadership
- You can demonstrate meaningful improvements to engineering effectiveness across people, technology and ways of working. You use data and metrics to identify opportunities, make decisions and understand whether your changes are having the intended impact
- You’ve led significant organisational change, taking teams from their current state to a materially better one. You can set a clear direction, build stakeholder buy-in and translate strategy into tangible progress
- You bring the technical credibility to engage in significant design and architectural decisions. You can process complex information, challenge thinking and make sound judgements, including practical build, buy or partner decisions
- You know how to build strong partnerships with Product and influence senior stakeholders. You’re comfortable navigating competing priorities and difficult conversations, combining conviction with high EQ and a low-ego approach
- You’re actively exploring how AI can improve engineering effectiveness and can talk practically about what you’ve tried, what worked, what didn’t and what you learned
- You’re comfortable operating with significant autonomy, bringing experience and judgement to complex challenges without needing the path laid out for you. You’re naturally curious, adaptable and resilient, and comfortable adjusting course as priorities change
- Experience within FinTech, lending or another regulated environment would be valuable, as would experience in a technology-first organisation
What the job involves
- As a Director of Engineering, you’ll lead an established engineering organisation responsible for one of our key business areas, with the autonomy and accountability to make a significant impact on how engineering performs at Zopa
- You’ll set direction, build high-performing teams and drive meaningful improvements across people, technology and ways of working
- This isn’t a role focused on incremental change: we’re looking for someone who can identify where the biggest opportunities exist, create a clear strategy and turn it into measurable progress
- You’ll have the scope to influence significant technical and architectural decisions, improve engineering effectiveness and shape how we build and operate technology
- Your impact will extend beyond the teams you directly lead. Our Directors are expected to raise the level of engineering across Zopa, working closely with Product, Commercial and Technology leaders to turn engineering improvements into better business outcomes
- Set and lead the engineering strategy for your area, identifying the biggest opportunities to improve technology, people and ways of working
- Take ownership of moving the organisation from its current state towards a clear future state, building stakeholder buy-in and delivering measurable progress
- Operate with a high degree of autonomy, making decisions and driving execution without requiring significant direction
- Lead a sizeable engineering organisation through Engineering Managers, setting a high bar for people leadership and engineering performance
- Build and develop high-performing teams through effective hiring, performance management and people practices
- Identify organisational challenges and opportunities, including how teams are structured and how engineering capacity is used most effectively
- Reduce key-person dependencies and build an organisation that can perform sustainably as it evolves
- Identify and deliver improvements that make engineers and engineering teams more effective across people, technology and process
- Use meaningful engineering metrics to identify opportunities, guide decisions and demonstrate whether changes are delivering the intended impact
- Drive practical adoption and experimentation with AI, focusing on how it changes engineering effectiveness rather than simply introducing new tools
- Share meaningful evidence of engineering performance with teams and stakeholders to inform decisions and drive continuous improvement
- Bring the technical credibility to challenge significant design and architectural decisions and make informed judgements on complex technology choices
- Develop clear strategies for improving, modernising, consolidating or replacing technology where opportunities exist
- Make pragmatic build, buy or partner decisions based on the needs of the organisation
- Work effectively with engineering, architecture, platform and other technology teams to manage dependencies and deliver change
- Build strong partnerships with Product and Commercial leaders, creating shared ownership of outcomes rather than operating in functional silos
- Influence senior stakeholders, navigate demanding conversations and build support for significant engineering change
- Build effective relationships across Technology and supporting functions, understanding how to leverage those teams rather than simply transact with them
- Contribute beyond your immediate organisation, helping raise the level of engineering across Zopa
- Bring the experience to quickly understand the problem space, form a clear point of view and turn it into action
- Take ownership of outcomes, moving at pace while knowing when to seek input, support or validation
- Draw on lessons from challenges you’ve faced before, adapting your approach rather than relying on a fixed playbook
- Ask the right questions, challenge existing approaches and continually look for opportunities to make engineering better
- Stay adaptable as business priorities and technology needs evolve, responding effectively when plans need to change
- Bring genuine curiosity to emerging technologies, particularly AI, and be willing to experiment, learn and apply what works
- Take a genuinely data-led approach, using meaningful metrics to understand engineering performance and identify where improvement is needed
- Go beyond reporting metrics by using them to shape priorities, change behaviours and measure the impact of your decisions
- Communicate engineering effectiveness in a way that gives teams and senior stakeholders a clear view of progress and outcomes
- Build trusted relationships across Engineering, Product, Commercial and the wider organisation
- Be comfortable having difficult conversations, constructively challenging others and standing behind decisions you believe are right
- Adapt your style to different stakeholders, combining conviction with collaboration to build buy-in and move change forward
- Look beyond incremental improvements and identify opportunities to make a step change in the organisations you lead
- Translate ambitious ideas into practical plans, bringing people with you and creating momentum towards meaningful outcomes
- Balance long-term thinking with visible progress, demonstrating impact while building towards larger-scale change
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Zopa has been a pioneering force in the world of finance since 2005, lending out billions in personal loans since its inception, before the launch of its bank in 2020. Its depth of lending experience makes it a digital bank with a difference - offering all the benefits customers have come to expect from a challenger bank, but backed up by 16 years of know how.
Zopa has carved out a strong position for itself in UK fintech, offering more than just loans with products like savings accounts and credit cards. And its clear focus on lending and saving has paid off, with recent investment fueling both product growth and its entry into business lending. The bank also made its first acquisition, snapping up 'buy now, pay later' platform DivideBuy, as part of its expansion strategy.
On top of that, Zopa is now boasting two consecutive years of profit doubling, a rare feat in digital banking. Backed by fresh funding, it's now pushing into new territory with plans to launch a current account and integrate generative AI into customer services.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Meet the team
10 people
Jamal Ud-Din, Product Manager
Our mission
Building the world's best credit card!Insights
Top investors
Company
Employee endorsements
Intelligent people
"My colleagues here at Zopa have a wealth of knowledge which they share constantly and are always willing to assist or give a second opinion on..."
Funding (last 2 of 14 rounds)
Dec 2024
$95.5m
LATE VC
Feb 2023
$101.7m
LATE VC
Total funding: $984.7m
Company benefits
- 2-3 days a week in the office. We value face-to-face collaboration and a good work-life balance.
- You'll also have the option of working from abroad for up to 120 days a year!* But no matter where you are, we’ll make sure you’ve got everything you need to thrive, both in your work and home life, from day one (*Subject to having the right to work in the country of choice)
- On top of regular bank holidays, you’ll get 25 days holiday as standard, rising up to 30 days as your tenure grows. For any teams that operate on a bank holiday, you may be offered an alternative day off.
- As a Zopian, you can opt into our private medical insurance through Vitality Health. This’ll give you access to private medical care, discounted gym memberships, and other rewards such as savings at various retailers for maintaining an active lifestyle. You also get free Headspace access to help with the all-important mindfulness we need
- 16-weeks full pay for all new parents. We offer enhanced maternity and paternity pay to employees wishing to start a family. New parents, including those adopting, are eligible to take up to 16-weeks leave at full pay.
Company values
- Customer Champion: Whatever the role, the customer is front and centre of our thinking. We care passionately about doing the best for them.
- Fearless Choices: Our environment is fast-paced, agile and open. You'll solve interesting and challenging problems and be trusted and empowered to bring your ideas to life.
- In It Together: You'll join an ambitious, diverse and all round approachable team with a mix of ideas and talents who inspire each other to be better every day.
- Walk The Talk: You'll be honest, stick to your promises and face the tough moments head on.
- Win smarter: You'll be always on the lookout for a better way of doing things, going beyond "good enough" and welcoming different points of view.
Company HQ
London, UK
Articles
Leadership
Jaidev
(CEO)Promoted from within Zopa, previously COO. 12 years of experience at Capital One, including Chief Marketing Officer for UK.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Zopa
- We're always looking for passionate and talented people who can help us be the best place for money. We welcome everyone, regardless of age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, parental status, race or religion.
- We run a successful mentoring program, with 28 mentors across the business. We believe this launching pad helps our internal talent stretch beyond their comfort zone, explore new avenues and grow into future leaders.
- We’re focused on ensuring a fair approach to attracting talent, from how we advertise roles to our application and interview process. For all our hiring requirements we mandate 50/50 shortlists and diverse interview panels. We also run all our adverts through a recognised gender de-coder to ensure we attract and hire a diverse range of people. More recently we’ve been experimenting with new job boards and partnerships like Otta Jobs and BYP Network (Black Youth Partnership Network) to increase diversity in our candidate sourcing.
- We’ve secured trail-blazing partnerships with organisations like Code First Girls, YSYS and BYP Network. We’ve already had huge success with our Code First Girls cohort who joined our tech community as Software Engineers and Database Administrators in January.
- We encourage Zopians to create memorable career journeys, and internal mobility plays a huge part in this. All our live job vacancies are posted on our internal jobs board. Over the last 12 months, we’ve trained and supported many Zopians to make internal career moves and become compliance officers, developers, lawyers and HR specialists. In fact, 20% of our open roles in Q3 2021 were filled by internal candidates. This not only makes Zopa a great place to work, but also allows us to break down some of the systemic pipeline issues that we see in STEM professions.
- Our Diversity & Inclusion focus groups and “All in” club celebrate diversity through various company events, such as quiz nights and “Bring your kids to work” day – our favourite is international food night!
- Everyone at Zopa has different working styles, and we want to support them in any way possible. That’s why we’re committed to flexible working whether that’s from home, in the office or a combination of both. What’s more, our model includes the option of working from abroad for up to 120 days a year!
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