Engineering Manager

Job description

ABOUT GRIFFIN Hi, we’re Griffin. We’re a fully regulated UK bank that powers the accounts and payments offerings of product-led fintechs and platforms like Uber, Yonder, Prosper, and Sidekick. By doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes, our customers can focus on what they do best - delivering amazing customer experiences. We’ve grown rapidly since our launch in 2024, and today provide the banking backbone behind products in remittance, payroll, wealth, insurance, proptech, payments, neobanking and more. We’re moving into card issuing, stablecoin infrastructure, and agentic finance next as we continue to support the next generation of product-led companies. Learn more about what we do https://griffin.com OUR CULTURE We believe that smart, motivated, conscientious people thrive in high-trust, high-autonomy environments and have done our best to create such an environment at Griffin. People who thrive here don’t require much hand-holding, and go out of their way to figure out how to contribute in the most valuable way possible. We've been remote-first since we were established in 2017 and we remain so today. Work here is asynchronous and fully flexible - because we want to be a part of your life in a way that helps you to get the most out of both your work and home life. We understand that our culture and ways of working aren’t for everyone, and we’re very intentional about our hiring process as a result. We won't hire people who don’t seem like a strong fit for our core values, even if they're otherwise extremely qualified. Our strong culture has helped us to remain a mission-driven company as we have scaled, and gives our people a clear, explicit operating framework and the space to focus on delivering real value for our customers. Learn more about our culture. https://griffin.com/culture THE TEAM The Craft function has small, cross-functional engineering teams - each with engineers, an engineering manager, and a product lead, working closely with designers. You'll work with one team that owns a product area end-to-end. When we start work, we explore multiple solutions before picking one. We write RFCs, build proof-of-concepts, and run experiments to validate approaches. Once we commit to building something, we care about maintainability more than cleverness, observability more than hoping it works, and scalability over premature optimisation. We prefer shipping quality code over hitting arbitrary deadlines. Once something goes live, we refactor the rough edges rather than polish what's already working. THE OPPORTUNITY Engineering managers here stay technical. You'll write code on non-critical paths, review PRs, and pair with engineers on problems. This isn't about capacity - it's how you empathise with what your team is dealing with and coach from a place of understanding. Each team owns an area like card issuing, payments, or onboarding end-to-end. Building the right culture matters as much as shipping features. You'll create an environment where engineers have high autonomy, psychological safety, and the space to do their best work. As we grow, you'll help us scale without losing what makes us good - hiring people who raise the bar and helping your team members develop. You'll shape what gets built. Working with product leads and stakeholders, you'll help engineers understand why they're building something, not just what - connecting their work to real customer problems. See our CTO's view on Engineering Leadership https://griffin.com/blog/the-case-for-technical-engineering-management WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE Success here is about enabling your team and building the right environment, communicating with the wider business on priorities and ensuring we’re estimating work accurately before they’re added to our roadmap. The team feels empowered by the level of ownership you’ve given them, taking your high level requirements and scoping them into work they execute. You've spotted blockers before they derailed delivery and cleared them. You've helped an engineer level up - maybe they're now leading technical decisions they wouldn't have touched six months ago, or presented their work in a tech dive when they were previously afraid of public speaking. You've improved how the team works. This could be how pitches get shaped so engineers have better context upfront, or fixing a process that was slowing everyone down. You've built a culture where people have high autonomy, feel safe to raise problems, and focus on impact over just being busy. The team ships quality work consistently because you've created an environment where that's possible. WHAT YOU'LL OWN - Delivery through Shape Up cycles - turning pitches into work engineers can execute, managing the shape/architect/build phases, making sure what ships actually solves the customer problem - Accountability over technical decisions - the architecture choices, the tradeoffs between extending and rebuilding, maintaining quality in systems where correctness isn't optional because we're moving real money - Engineer development in a high-autonomy environment - helping people grow when they have freedom to make their own decisions, addressing performance issues without micromanagement - Hiring for a functional programming shop - finding engineers who can thrive writing Clojure or are willing to learn it, building a team that can handle distributed systems and financial services constraints YOUR BACKGROUND We place a lot of emphasis on our Engineering Leaders having the technical skills to be able to write code well enough to review it, pair on it, and contribute meaningfully. So for this role we're looking for someone with: - Functional programming skills - either you've built production systems or led teams that have using Clojure, Elixir, Erlang, Haskell, Scala, or similar languages. Beyond that, you'll need: - Experience building high-performing teams - you've hired well, developed engineers, and created environments where people do their best work - Comfort working with product teams - you've shaped what gets built alongside PMs, not just executed on requirements handed down - Comfort with high autonomy and startup pace - you trust your team to make decisions, priorities shift, and you don't need perfect clarity to move forward Fintech domain expertise (nice to have) - you've managed engineering teams in payments, banking, cards, or similar areas where compliance, money movement, and correctness aren't abstract concepts WHAT CAN WE OFFER YOU? - We are an early stage startup and we're working hard to expand our benefits package. We're planning to add to this list in the future. - Remote-first flexibility: Work from anywhere in the UK - Work from abroad: Up to 20 days a year - Time off: 25 days’ holiday, bank holidays and a winter break (we shut down between Christmas and New Year) - Share options: Own a part of what we’re building together - Pension: Auto-enrolment into our Penfold scheme - Insurance: Private medical with Bupa (including family cover) and life insurance with AIG - Wellbeing: 1:1 coaching and therapy session available through Oliva - Family leave: Enhanced parental leave with up to 6 months on full pay after two years’ service - AI tools: Everyone has a Claude subscription on us and access to other premium tools - Your setup: We’ll support you in creating a comfortable and effective WFH environment. HOW DO I APPLY? Are we your next move? Apply via the link below, if there's a match our Talent team will reach out to schedule an initial conversation and talk you through what happens next. WE’RE REMOTE-FIRST We trust people to do great work wherever they are. We hire across the UK and most of our team works remotely full-time. We have a small London office in Moorgate for those who want it, and about a third of the company is close enough to use it occasionally, but there's no expectation to be there. What matters is the work, not where you do it. UNDER REPRESENTATION At Griffin, we’re looking for people who instinctively vibe with our values, behaviours and mission. You’re encouraged to apply, even if your experience doesn’t tick every box. Careers, like life, can take many twists and turns. Your technical expertise and path to where you are today will stand out. We're committed to creating a place where everyone belongs and we welcome diverse perspectives, backgrounds and people who are ready to build a global platform for programmable finance GRIFFIN BANK LTD REQUEST THAT RECRUITMENT AGENCIES DO NOT SPECULATIVELY SUBMIT CVS TO ANY EMPLOYEE OR ASSOCIATE OF OUR COMPANY UNLESS EXPLICITLY ASKED TO DO SO BY A MEMBER OF OUR TALENT TEAM. ANY CVS SENT TO ANY MEMBER OF OUR TEAM ON A SPECULATIVE BASIS WILL NOT BE RECOGNISED AND WE WILL NOT ACCEPT LIABILITY FOR ANY FEE OR COMMISSION SHOULD WE SUBSEQUENTLY EMPLOY A CANDIDATE WHO APPLIED TO US DIRECTLY OR WAS INTRODUCED BY AN INSTRUCTED AGENCY THAT MAY ALSO HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED SPECULATIVELY BY AN UNINSTRUCTED AGENCY.