Technical Lead - Backend

We're seeking an experienced Backend Tech Lead to take charge of one of our backend Golang teams. The ideal candidate is a highly skilled software engineer who thrives in leading a team and can help deliver the projects that will shape the future of our organisation. We're on a path to build the world's most impactful, fully-automated and holistic financial advice solution, and we need your help to deliver it to as many people as possible.

About Octopus Money

At Octopus Money, we’re on a mission to make money advice accessible to all – because the right advice can turn your life dreams into reality.

The facts are alarming: half of Brits reach retirement age without enough money to live the life they want, financial stress is a leading cause of poor mental health and only 8% of us have access to 1-to-1 advice.

There’s plenty of information out there, but most of us just wish that someone we trust would tell us what to do with our money!

With Octopus, you get a personalised plan and a friendly expert to help you make it happen. We combine advisers, coaches and technology to understand your situation and recommend the right steps for your savings, investments, pensions and more. Then, we make it easy to invest in a custom portfolio, managed by experts.

We believe everyone deserves personal, 1-to-1 advice with their money.

The role and opportunity

The Backend Tech Lead plays a pivotal role in the engineering team, serving as a bridge between technical strategy and execution. Reporting to the Engineering Manager, the Backend Tech Lead is responsible for guiding the technical direction of projects, ensuring alignment with business objectives, and fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation within the team.

Our back-end API service layer is written in Go following a documentation first mindset. We use a service oriented architecture to enable extensive unit-testing with generated mocks. Our services are deployed via a CI/CD pipeline to our AWS cloud environments.

As a Tech Lead you will still spend 60-80% of your time writing code as part of the Scrum team but you will also have additional responsibilities.

You will be responsible for:

• Code Development and Review:
  • Able to demonstrate excellent Go development skills, with the ability to write high-quality, easily testable code.
  • Champion software engineering best practices, including automated tests, code refactoring, and code reviews where appropriate.
  • Ensure adherence to coding standards, security guidelines, and compliance requirements.
• Project Management:
  • Drive the execution of projects from conception to delivery, ensuring milestones are met.
  • Coordinate with Product Managers to prioritise features and tasks, balancing technical debt and business needs.
• Team Collaboration:
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate business requirements into technical solutions, working closely with Product and Design Leads.
• Technical Leadership:
  • Provide technical guidance, mentorship, and line management of 2-3 engineers.
  • Foster a culture of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous learning within the team.
  • Encourage innovation and experimentation, promoting a culture of adaptability and resilience.
• Technical Strategy:
  • Contribute to the development of technical roadmaps and long-term strategies, aligning with business objectives.
  • Stay updated on industry trends and emerging technologies, identifying opportunities for innovation and improvement.
  • Evaluate new tools, frameworks, and technologies, making recommendations for adoption based on technical and business considerations.

About You

Collaborative and a great team player

We’ve built a great team of top performers, and you’ll need to work with others from across the business to identify problems, agree solutions and implement changes

Problem solver at heart with an analytical mindset

You should be someone who gets excited by complex problems and can find creative ways to solve them no matter what your level of knowledge and experience with the subject matter. You should be able to digest complexity and develop a plan to move forward, without losing sight of the important details.

Goal driven and not afraid to get stuck in

We like to set ambitious goals and find creative ways to hit them, even if that means rolling up our sleeves and doing manual tasks before we’ve managed to fully automate them. You should have a bias towards action and getting things done.

Knowledge and Experience required

• Over five years of expertise in software development, specialising in back-end systems with a strong proficiency in Go
• Delivered cloud-based REST API solutions
• Demonstrable experience architecting back-end business platforms with a knowledge of common patterns
• Proven track record of technical leadership, preferably in a fast-paced environment
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to influence and collaborate effectively across teams
• Ideally educated to Bachelor's or Master's degree level in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Nice to have (but not essential)

• Fintech industry experience
• SaaS knowledge and experience
• Microservice and integrating distributed systems with messaging and event driven architectures
• AWS Architecture experience

In return for your contribution we offer a base salary of £90,000 - £110,000 DOE + benefits