Technical Lead - Backend

About Marshmallow

We started Marshmallow when we found out how unfair insurance prices are for people who move to the UK. All because the industry hasn’t given this huge cohort of people a second’s thought, and isn’t set up to price them properly. 

We saw an opportunity to do things differently, so we made it our mission to back the ones who step outside the norm. Since we started, we’ve helped 100,000s of people get a fairer deal on their car insurance. Using technology, we serve people that are often overlooked by financial services companies, solving important problems for people who need it most. 

We know there are millions of marginalised customers out there. And we know that they face unique problems that most companies aren’t even aware of. We believe that our future is helping these people by learning about their experiences, and building our company around their needs. And there are strong signs that there’s a need for a company like us. Earlier this year we hit profitability, which is a huge milestone, but the most exciting thing is that we’re only just getting started.

How we work

We’re really proud of the culture we’ve created. We push for progress every day, because we know that we’ll only hit big milestones by taking lots of smaller steps. We’re always open to helping our team mates, sharing our ideas, experience and knowledge to solve problems together. We take risks, think creatively and experiment relentlessly to meet our customer’s needs, and never pass blame when things go wrong. We encourage people at all levels to take ownership of their work, and to be bold in challenging how we do things. Everyone has a voice and the opportunity to make an impact. 

And autonomy and ownership are only possible with clear direction. That’s why we collaborate to do in-depth planning twice a year, and make sure we leave with clear goals and objectives that flow from top to bottom. To make sure we’re as aligned as possible across functions, most of our work rolls up into four tribes; Acquisition, Retention, Claims and Pricing, Underwriting & Fraud. Each tribe has multiple teams embedded in it, working cross-functionally to do great work.

We’re so excited for all of the challenges up ahead, and we need more people to help us tackle them! If life at Marshmallow sounds like it could be for you, explore our culture handbook or read our blog to find out more.

Engineering at Marshmallow

Our engineers are at the heart of the solutions. They work on product builds from start to finish, solving lots of challenges to help us build fast and scale up! Our engineers cover a range of skills across frontend, backend, full stack, iOS and android, and work alongside designers, data scientists, researchers and product managers within our product teams.

Our product teams include: Renewals, Growth and Claims to name a few! Each team sets its own roadmap, owns the build and maintenance of products E2E and actively pushes the codebase forward for scale.

If you're curious about our Engineering culture and ways of working, check out the Engineering Handbook.

About the In-Policy Team you'd be joining

The In-Policy Team is one of 2 product teams within the Retention Tribe. Together with the Renewals Team, our vision is to be an industry leader in retaining customers for longer and more profitably. To do this, we have a lot to learn about why customers choose to renew, cancel or pay to make changes to their insurance mid-term. As part of the In-Policy Team you will work to grow income from existing customers, reduce cancellations and build systems that are both scalable and reliable.

We’re looking for a Technical Lead to join our cross-functional team together with a Pricing Analyst, Data Scientist, Data Analyst, Product Manager and an Engineering Manager.

What you'll be doing

• Lead engineers within a product team to build scalable, reliable and fault tolerant customers flows, including midterm adjustments and cancellations

• Manage and execute ambiguous technical solutions with appropriate sense of urgency to deliver impact to the business

• Create and promote efficiency and speed within the team by improving existing solutions and developing new ones

• Partner with stakeholders to understand requirements, build and deliver functionality iteratively

• Mentor engineers from Junior to Senior levels of experience, supporting their development through feedback and sharing opportunities

• Both originate and review architectural designs to meet Marshmallow’s growing scale

• Work closely with the EM to champion and roadmap technical debt investment

What we’re looking for from you

• 10+ years of software engineering experience

• 5 years of experience as a Technical Lead

• Strong experience with developing and scaling complex microservices systems

• Previous experience with identifying, analysing, and resolving system availability, reliability, and performance issues

• Experience mentoring and guiding more engineers with a range of experience

• Strong expertise in any OO language, preferably in Java and the eagerness to learn more

Our Tech Stack

• Java 22

• “Event-Driven” μServices

• Spring Boot with Spring Cloud

• Terraform

• Docker

• Event Sourcing

• DataDog

• CI/CD

• AWS

  • DynamoDB

  • SNS

  • SQS

  • ECS

  • Fargate

  • RDS

  • Elasticache

  • OpenSearch

Perks of the job

• Flexible working: Spend 3 days a week with your team in our new collaborative London office, and own your own working hours. The rest is up to you!

• Sabbatical Leave - Get a 4-week fully paid sabbatical after being with us for 4 years 🌴

• Work From Anywhere - 4 weeks of work from anywhere to use, with no need to come to the office 🛫

• Competitive bonus scheme - designed to reward and recognise high performance 🌟

• Flexible benefits budget - £50 per month to spend on a Ben Mastercard meaning you get your own benefits budget to spend on things you want. Whether that’s subscriptions, night classes (puppy yoga, anyone?), the big shop or a forest of houseplants. Pretty much anything goes. 💰

• Learning and development – Personal budget for books and training courses to help you grow in your role and 2 learning days a year - on us! - to further your skillset 🤓

• Mental wellbeing support – Access therapy and mental health sessions through Oliva 💚

• Private health care - Enjoy all the benefits Vitality has to offer, including reduced gym memberships and discounts on smartwatches 🏥

• Medical cash plan - To help you with the costs of dental, optical and physio (plus more!)

• Tech scheme - Get the latest tech for less 🖥

Plus all the rest; 33 days holiday (including bank holidays), pension, cycle to work scheme, monthly team socials and company-wide socials every month!

Our process

We break it up into 3 stages:

• Initial call with Tech Talent Acquisition team (30/45 mins)

• Tech interview with two engineers which is centred around pair programming, systems design and operational excellence questions (1 hour 30 minutes)

• A past experience & culture interview with one of our engineering managers to check that your ways of working aligns with our processes, mission and values (1 hour 30 minutes)

We’ll let you know if you’re invited to an interview or not. But, as a small team with a lot of applications to consider, we can’t give individual feedback on each application

Background checks

To meet our regulatory obligations as an FCA-authorised financial services company, we need to do some background checks on all new hires. That means carrying out a DBS check and making sure you don't have any live criminal proceedings. Feel free to ask our Talent Acquisition team if you have any questions about this!

Everyone belongs at Marshmallow

At Marshmallow, we want to hire people from all walks of life with the passion and skills needed to help us achieve our company mission. To do that, we're committed to hiring without judgement, prejudice or bias.

We encourage everyone to apply for our open roles. Gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or background does not affect how we process job applications.

We're working hard to build an inclusive culture that empowers our people to do their best work, have fun and feel that they belong.

Recruitment privacy policy

We take privacy seriously here at Marshmallow. Our Recruitment privacy notice explains how we process and handle your personal data. To find out more please view it here.