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MonzoSenior Staff Backend Engineer
This full-time Senior Staff Backend Engineer role at Monzo is based in London, or can be done remotely across the UK. Monzo is a UK bank…
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About This Role
This full-time Senior Staff Backend Engineer role at Monzo is based in London, or can be done remotely across the UK. Monzo is a UK bank with about 650 engineers among roughly 5,500 people. Engineers can move between teams or specialize, and the company contributes to open source software. The position is a senior staff role graded L70 on the company's engineering progression framework. The post is an individual-contributor leadership…
Job Description
This full-time Senior Staff Backend Engineer role at Monzo is based in London, or can be done remotely across the UK. Monzo is a UK bank with about 650 engineers among roughly 5,500 people. Engineers can move between teams or specialize, and the company contributes to open source software. The position is a senior staff role graded L70 on the company's engineering progression framework. The post is an individual-contributor leadership role in engineering, hands-on rather than focused on managing people.
Working with engineering directors, the senior staff engineer sets technical and product direction for a collective that may span 30 to 70-plus engineers across multiple squads. The engineer keeps writing code and designing systems, takes the lead on the most intricate platforms and checks that designs cohere across teams and with overall system direction. The role also collaborates with product and design heads on strategy, roadmap shaping and trade-offs that boost business and customer results throughout the collective.
Other responsibilities include rallying teams around high-impact problems, sometimes adding urgency and sometimes slowing down to protect safety and long-term sustainability. The engineer sets a high bar for quality, reliability and scalability, and helps build a culture in which engineers hold one another to that standard. Mentoring and sponsoring senior engineers and future leaders, and helping others work at a higher level, are central parts of the post.
Technologies in use include Go, Cassandra, Kafka, Kubernetes and Docker, with AWS hosting most production systems, GCP handling most data infrastructure, React for internal dashboards and Feast for feature storage. The best fit has steered intricate, high-impact systems across multiple teams, pairs technical judgement with product sense, and has built scalable backend, distributed or data-heavy platforms. Pay is listed at £155,000 to £200,000 plus equity.
Responsibilities
- Work with engineering directors to define technical and product direction for a collective of 30 to 70-plus engineers
- Keep coding and designing architecture yourself, leading by example
- Guide and sway architecture decisions for the knottiest systems
- Work with product and design leaders on strategy, roadmaps and trade-offs
- Rally teams around high-impact problems and set the pace as needed
- Establish and maintain demanding standards for quality, reliability and scale throughout the collective
- Coach, champion and grow senior engineers and the leaders of tomorrow
Requirements
- History of guiding intricate, high-impact systems and setting technical direction across multiple teams
- Strong technical judgement combined with product and business awareness
- Background in scalable backend, distributed or data-heavy systems
- Ease working in unclear problem areas, helping teams settle direction and deliver
- Capacity to sway and unify senior leaders in engineering, product and adjacent areas
- A focus on outcomes and impact, guided by data
Qualifications
- Experience mentoring other engineers and raising the bar for engineering practice
Core Skills
Benefits
- Equity in addition to base salary
- Yearly learning allowance of £1,000 for books, courses and conferences
- Help relocating to the UK and visa sponsorship
- Flexible working hours, the option of part-time work, and a home-working setup with a MacBook for fully remote workers
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers are based only on the employer’s listing; where it doesn’t say, neither do we.
Where is this job based?
The role can be based in London. Distributed working around the UK is also allowed, with occasional London meetings.
What is the pay?
The posting gives a base salary of £155,000 to £200,000 plus equity.
What level is the role?
The posting describes the role as Senior Staff Engineer, L70 on the company's Engineering Progression Framework.
What does the interview process involve?
Following a casual recruiter chat, the stages are an initial call, a system design session, a take-home exercise or paired coding, and a final round covering behaviour and leadership. The process typically runs three to four weeks.
Sample Interview Questions
AI-generated questions tailored to this specific role — a preview of the full practice set.
