[Hiring] Senior Staff Engineer @tem

Role Description

We're hiring a Senior Staff Engineer for our brand new Payments squad, part of Saldo, our Billing and Payments Service. Payments at tem works today, but it's a basic service. We're growing fast, and it needs to be built for the scale we're moving towards. You'll be the first tech lead in a squad that already has a senior engineer and three junior engineers, and you'll own the outcome of the squad's delivery and the standards it works to.

This is a hands-on role. You'll:

• Write design docs
• Review code
• Solve the hardest problems alongside the team
• Set the technical direction for payments

Your job is to bring down the cost of processing every pound that flows through tem and keep it low as we scale.

In your first 12 months, you might:

• Set the architecture direction that takes payments from a functional service to one built for growth
• Define how the squad works, including the balance between speed, quality, and resilience that payments demands
• Lift the quality and speed bar for the whole squad, senior and junior engineers alike
• Drive the technical blockers to delivery to resolution, so the squad's work reaches the people who depend on it
• Make payment accuracy and processing efficiency the levers that bring cost-to-process down

You'll report into the Service Manager for Saldo.

Qualifications

• A track record as a tech lead, owning the outcome of a squad's delivery and the standards it works to
• A track record of leading from the front line: writing design docs, reviewing PRs and ADRs, and solving problems hands-on while setting direction
• The ability to balance hands-on work on the biggest technical challenges with coaching more junior engineers, holding the whole team to a consistent quality and speed bar
• Experience designing a team's ways of working from scratch, balancing speed, quality, and resilience
• Experience owning cross-team sequencing and dependencies, and diagnosing throughput problems rather than just reporting them
• Comfort cutting through real ambiguity to set technical direction, and driving technical blockers to resolution rather than just visibility

Requirements

• Experience with payments systems
• Experience improving cost-to-process or processing efficiency in a high-volume service
• Experience taking a service from a basic first version to something built for scale

Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Stock options so everyone has ownership in our mission
• 25 days holiday plus public holidays; swap public holidays for the ones that matter most to you, and enjoy your birthday off
• Remote first and flexible working, with clear core hours and no internal meetings on Friday afternoons
• Up to GBP1,200 or EUR1,200 per year for your remote setup
• Up to GBP150 or EUR150 per month for wellbeing