Lead Software Engineer

Job description

**About Abound** We’re redefining consumer lending in the UK, and beyond. Using advanced AI and Open Banking data, we make fair, affordable personal finance available to more people. While traditional lenders rely almost entirely on credit scores, we look at the full financial picture - how much you spend, and what you can afford to repay to build a deeper, more accurate understanding of each customer's unique financial situation. And we've shown it works at scale. We’ve issued over **£1.3bn** in loans directly to customers while delivering **market-leading credit performance** - for every 10 defaults the industry expects, we see only 3. We also reached profitability just 2.5 years after launch. Backed by **£2bn+** of funding from top-tier investors including Citi, GSR Ventures, and Deutsche Bank, we’re recognised as one of Europe’s fastest-growing fintechs (Sifted, CNBC). Now, we’re expanding into new markets and product lines - and we’re looking for ambitious people who want to learn fast, take ownership, and grow with us. **About the Role** We're looking for a hands-on Lead Software Engineer to lead technology delivery for Abound Spain. This role will be responsible for adapting, deploying and operating Abound’s lending platform in Spain, ensuring it meets local business, operational and regulatory requirements while remaining aligned with our global technology strategy. This role combines hands-on software engineering, solution architecture, technical leadership and team management, reporting to the Spain Director and to the Chief Product Officer. While remaining actively involved in software development, you will act as the technology owner for Spain, ensuring Abound’s global platform is successfully localised, integrated and operated within the Spanish market. You will work closely with Product Managers, Engineering, Risk, Operations, Compliance and external technology partners to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions. You will help shape the local technology roadmap, ensuring that Spain benefits from the strength of Abound’s existing platform while adapting it to the needs of the local market. We value engineers who enjoy solving complex problems, take ownership beyond writing code, and are equally comfortable discussing architecture, integrations, operational resilience and software delivery. This is an opportunity to play a key role in launching and scaling Abound’s business in Spain while remaining close to the technology. At Abound, you'll be part of a culture that values autonomy, curiosity and continuous improvement. You'll work with a modern Python-based technology stack, gain deep exposure to consumer lending and fintech, and can build a scalable technology operation from an established global platform. **Our technology stack** - Python (FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, OpenTelemetry, Procrastinate) - PostgreSQL - Liquibase - Docker - AWS **Who you are** - Strong experience building and maintaining production systems in Python. - Experience leading engineering teams or complex technical projects. - A hands-on engineer who enjoys solving technical problems while providing technical leadership. - Experience designing solution architectures for business-critical systems. - Experience adapting and deploying shared technology platforms to meet local market, operational and regulatory requirements. - Strong understanding of distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native architectures and modern software engineering practices. - Experience integrating third-party technology providers and external platforms. - Experience collaborating directly with business stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions. - Strong engineering judgement with the ability to make pragmatic technical and architectural decisions. - Experience maintaining highly available production environments with a focus on reliability, observability and operational excellence. - Strong sense of ownership and accountability, with a delivery-focused mindset. - Experience working with AWS or equivalent cloud platforms. **Highly desirable** - Experience within consumer lending, retail banking or regulated financial services. - Good understanding of the end-to-end lending lifecycle, including loan origination, servicing and collections. - Experience working with lending platforms rather than building products entirely from scratch. - Experience localising global technology platforms for regulated markets. - Experience integrating Open Banking providers, payment providers, credit bureaus, identity verification, fraud prevention and collections platforms. - Experience evaluating and selecting third-party technology vendors. - Experience supporting Business Continuity Planning (BCP), Disaster Recovery and operational resilience initiatives. - Experience operating technology within regulated environments, understanding governance, auditability, information security and operational controls. **What you will be doing** - Leading and managing a small engineering team, supporting their growth through coaching, mentoring and regular feedback. - Remaining hands-on by contributing directly to the codebase and leading engineering best practices. - Acting as the technology owner for Spain, ensuring successful implementation and evolution of Abound’s platform within the local market. - Defining solution architectures that leverage Abound’s global platform while addressing Spain-specific business, operational and regulatory requirements. - Leading technical implementation of new capabilities required for the Spanish business. - Coordinating internal engineering teams and third-party technology providers to deliver reliable, scalable solutions. - Evaluating, integrating and managing third-party providers supporting the lending ecosystem, including payments, Open Banking, customer communications, fraud prevention and collections. - Working closely with Product, Risk, Operations and Compliance teams to ensure technology solutions support business growth and operational excellence. - Supporting engineers through code reviews, pairing and technical guidance. - Participating throughout the full software development lifecycle, from design and implementation through testing, deployment, monitoring and production support. - Helpinf structure engineering delivery, including sprint planning, estimation and retrospectives. - Contributing to Business Continuity Planning, Disaster Recovery and operational resilience. - Providing second-line production support during business hours, troubleshooting issues affecting business operations and customers. - Continuously identifying opportunities to simplify architecture, improve platform scalability and increase operational efficiency. **What success looks like** - Successfully delivering the technology capabilities required to launch and scale Abound’s lending business in Spain. - Building strong working relationships across Engineering, Product, Risk, Operations and Compliance. - Establishing a robust local technology operating model fully aligned with Abound’s global platform. - Delivering successful integrations with key third-party technology providers. - Improving platform resilience, operational readiness and engineering quality. - Building a high-performing engineering culture that combines technical excellence with pragmatic execution. - Collaborating successfully across Risk, Operations, Technology and Compliance functions.