Opportunity at
TideHead of Engineering, Cards
Tide builds administrative and financial solutions designed to help small and medium-sized enterprises save money and time. Serving over two million members globally across multiple countries,…
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About This Role
Tide builds administrative and financial solutions designed to help small and medium-sized enterprises save money and time. Serving over two million members globally across multiple countries, the company operates a large business banking and account platform. The Cards domain represents one of Tide's highest revenue-generating lines, handling end-to-end card issuing and processing functions throughout the UK, European Union, and India. This domain manages prepaid, debit, multi-currency, and team cards, alongside…
Job Description
Tide builds administrative and financial solutions designed to help small and medium-sized enterprises save money and time. Serving over two million members globally across multiple countries, the company operates a large business banking and account platform. The Cards domain represents one of Tide's highest revenue-generating lines, handling end-to-end card issuing and processing functions throughout the UK, European Union, and India. This domain manages prepaid, debit, multi-currency, and team cards, alongside payment wallet tokenisation, secure authentication, card controls, and financial settlement.
As the Head of Engineering, Cards, the selected leader will direct the engineering organization across the UK, EU, and India to guide the platform into its next operational phase. Following the primary core platform transformation, this role focuses on advancing product and member experiences, integrating AI coding agents across the software development lifecycle, and concluding the migration away from legacy processors to optimize financial unit economics. The engineering structure consists of distributed teams spanning Bulgaria, India, Lithuania, Romania, and Serbia, collaborating closely with product, design, commercial, and operations divisions.
This position requires an accomplished engineering executive with an extensive technical background and verified experience directing large, geographically distributed technical groups within banking, payments, or card environments. The ideal candidate will combine architectural expertise in microservices and cloud systems with commercial insight, stakeholder management ability, and a dedication to cultivating senior engineering talent.
Responsibilities
- Lead and mentor engineering managers and senior individual contributors across distributed teams
- Establish the technical vision and architectural standards for the Cards domain
- Enhance system reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency regarding card issuing and processing
- Integrate AI-assisted and agentic development methods across engineering workflows
- Coordinate with Product, Design, and Commercial departments to define and execute the roadmap
- Manage technical connections, integrations, and certifications with card processors and card schemes
- Expand engineering capabilities at the Staff and senior individual contributor levels
- Partner with other engineering leaders in Payments regarding shared technical infrastructure
Requirements
- Experience managing engineering managers and large engineering groups
- Background in cards, payments, or banking with knowledge of card issuing, processing, and scheme operations
- Experience creating and managing distributed engineering organizations across multiple sites
- Demonstrated ability to elevate engineering productivity, quality, and delivery speed
- Familiarity collaborating with Product, Commercial, and Finance leaders regarding unit economics
- Experience handling third-party technology vendors and strategic business partnerships
- Technical understanding of microservices, event-driven architecture, and cloud-native systems
- Experience with relational databases, distributed systems, and high-volume transaction processing
- Proficiency in challenging architectural decisions and conducting technical and production-level reviews
- Practical background using AI coding agents across the software development lifecycle
Qualifications
- Direct experience operating on either the issuer or processor side of card systems
Core Skills
Benefits
- Competitive salary and share options
- Generous annual leave in addition to bank holidays
- Paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave
- Extended paid and unpaid sabbatical options following milestone years
- Access to salary sacrifice programs including Nursery discounts and Cycle to Work schemes
- Comprehensive private family health insurance
- Accidental and life insurance protection
- Mental wellbeing support including therapy sessions and meditations
- Pension scheme contributions on eligible earnings
- Paid annual days for volunteering or personal growth
- Dedicated annual learning and development budget
- Option to work from abroad for up to 90 days annually under the Work Outside the Office program
- Home office setup contribution
- Laptop ownership program allowing retention of older laptops upon replacement
- Daily breakfast spread with all-day coffee, tea, and juices in office
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers are based only on the employer’s listing; where it doesn’t say, neither do we.
What is the location or remote work policy for this role?
The posting lists the location as the United Kingdom. Tide utilizes a flexible workplace model supporting both in-person and remote work, with offices designed as collaboration hubs and options to work from abroad for up to 90 days annually.
What are the main responsibilities of the Head of Engineering, Cards?
Responsibilities include leading distributed engineering teams across the UK, EU, and India, defining technical strategy for the Cards domain, integrating AI coding agents into development workflows, and managing relationships with card processors and schemes.
What salary is offered for this position?
The salary is not stated in the job posting, though the role offers competitive compensation including share options.
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