Backend Engineering Manager

We’re Atom bank

The bank that’s leading the fintech charge!

We’re not like the rest. We’re true innovators, and we’re redefining what a bank should be. Ours is a bank for today and the future, a mobile-first bank. Forget the stuffy branches, with Atom you can bank whenever, wherever, faster, and simpler.

Could you be the next innovator to join us?

What will your typical day look like? Different that’s for sure…

Are you a passionate people leader with deep technical credibility, ready to maximise the potential of a world-class engineering team?

Atom is the UK’s first app-based bank, known for its cutting-edge technology stack and commitment to value. Technology is at the core of our business, and we operate in long-lived, value-stream aligned teams that deliver change safely and at pace.

We are looking for a Backend Engineering Manager to lead our entire Backend Engineering Practice. This is a people enabler role, focused on coaching, mentorship, and cultivating a high-performance culture. While you won’t be hands-on with the code, you must be technically credible to inspire and guide our engineers. You will be responsible for getting the absolute best out of our engineering function, driving excellence across our Microservices, Data, Core Banking, and Integration Guilds.

What you’ll be doing:

• Engineering Leadership & Coaching: Lead, coach, and advocate for the Backend Engineering team, serving as a people enabler who unblocks them to increase engagement and productivity.
• Performance & Culture: Manage the overall performance of the team and drive a high-performance culture with a focus on performance, scalability, privacy, and security. You must be comfortable having difficult conversations to maintain standards.
• Capability Development: Manage continued capability development, ensuring delivery teams possess the right engineering skills to enable elite delivery. You’ll evangelise modern practices like TDD, BDD, and CI/CD.
• Technical Roadmaps & Consistency: Support the Principal Engineering community in devising and executing technical roadmaps across value streams, driving cross-value-stream consistency where beneficial.
• Optimising the SDLC: Collaborate across departments (Architecture, Engineering & Delivery) to optimise the software development lifecycle for safety and flow. This includes owning solutions for developer onboarding and generating process and tooling improvements to keep engineers productive.

What do we need from you?

• A genuine passion for people management, coupled with the ability to create and drive a high-performance culture.
• Significant experience working with backend technologies and a working knowledge of best practices in API, data, and microservices development. While not a hands-on coding role, you must be technically credible.
• Excellent brokering and collaboration skills, with a proven ability to regularly achieve consensus amongst departments.
• Proven ability to institute processes like architecture reviews and testing culture to ensure high technical standards are adhered to.
• A broad understanding of full-stack development in an Agile/DevOps environment.

What you’ll get from us:

• Salary up to £100k
• Flexible Hybrid working
• Discretionary annual cash bonus, based on performance
• 4-day work week
• Incredibly generous company pension scheme (maximum of 13% of Atom input – candidate can put in more)
• 22.5 days annual leave plus public holidays
• Private Medical Insurance for you and your full family
• Health Cash Plan, Life Insurance & Critical illness cover

PLEASE NOTE: You must have the legal right to work in the UK to apply for this role as Atom is unable to support Visa Applications/Sponsorship

Atom is an equal opportunities employer. We value you as an individual and therefore disregard race, religion/belief, gender, sexual orientation, maternity/pregnancy, age, gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnership and disability in any hiring decisions we make. Atom will always adhere to the Equality Act 2010.

All roles within Atom must adhere to the Conduct Rules as set out by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)

As part of Atom bank’s commitment to the FCA’s Consumer Duty, Atom will, take all reasonable steps to avoid causing foreseeable harm to customers, take all reasonable steps to enable customers to pursue their financial objectives and act in good faith.