Job Description

About Lendable

Lendable is on a mission to make consumer finance amazing: faster, cheaper and friendlier. We\xe2\x80\x99re building one of the world\xe2\x80\x99s leading fintech companies and are off to a strong start:

• One of the UK\xe2\x80\x99s newest unicorns with a team of just over 250 people
• Among the top 10 fastest-growing tech companies in the UK
• Profitable since 2017
• Backed by top investors including Balderton Capital and Goldman Sachs
• Loved by customers with the best reviews in the market (4.8/5 across 10,000s of reviews)

So far, we\xe2\x80\x99ve rebuilt the Big Three consumer finance products from scratch: loans, credit cards and car finance. We get money into our customers\xe2\x80\x99 hands in minutes instead of days. We\xe2\x80\x99re growing fast, and there\xe2\x80\x99s a lot more to do: we\xe2\x80\x99re going after the two biggest Western markets (UK and US) where trillions worth of these are held by big banks with dated systems and painful processes.

Join us if you want to

• Take ownership across a broad remit. You are trusted to make decisions that drive a material impact on the direction and success of Lendable from day 1
• Work in small teams of exceptional people, who are relentlessly resourceful to solve problems and find smarter solutions than the status quo
• Build the best technology in-house, using new data sources, machine learning and AI to make machines do the heavy lifting

About the role

In the UK, we are currently focused on scaling our products exponentially. Our primary objective is to develop a groundbreaking direct-to-consumer proposition that empowers customers to effortlessly apply for and manage all our products within a single app. This ambitious endeavour entails creating innovative features and seamlessly integrating them with our existing systems in the UK, ultimately delivering a cohesive and exceptional user experience across our entire product range. To accomplish this, we are seeking an experienced, intelligent, and analytical individual to join us as an Engineering Manager (EM) for our super app team. As the EM, you will report to the VP of Engineering (UK) and assume day-to-day ownership of the Super App, working closely with the Product Manager to drive its success. You will be expected to manage ~8 engineers of varying seniority levels and skills including backend, frontend, and full stack specialisms. The heart of engineering at Lendable is backend PHP and frontend React, however many of our BE services are adopting Kotlin where appropriate and experience across various technologies demonstrating strong core engineering capabilities is highly advantageous.

Over the next 12 months (and beyond!), you will...

• Support the engineers you manage in your team through 1:1s, where you will have great career coaching sessions, and support their development and growth by regularly setting goals with them. You will give them actionable feedback that helps them understand what to keep doing and what to work on.
• Use your experience and knowledge of High Performing Teams to lead & support the team to become efficient at planning and shipping complex products. You will engender a Continuous Improvement mindset, and build up a track record of making significant process improvements.
• Place a particular emphasis on clear, engaging and empathetic communication, and know how to get buy-in for improvements. You value different communication tools but know how to deliver your message best (In-person, slack, video, email, etc.) You champion asynchronous and remote-friendly working practices.
• Use your technical background as an engineer to ask the right questions of the team - is what is being delivered scalable and robust? Does it have good monitoring? How will it be tested? You endeavour to keep your knowledge relevant and can support your team in making good choices.
  
  You will work alongside the Tech Lead. You would be expected to contribute to the technical delivery by spending up to a quarter of your time pairing with engineers to get to understand our implementation and architecture. You embrace automation and testing as core \xe2\x80\x9cmust-haves\xe2\x80\x9d of every successful and lean software solution
• Encourage high levels of psychological safety and identify what changes will benefit the team through running regular health checks. You will look for new ways of increasing the skillset and team health, leading to even better outcomes.
• Build a strong working relationship with the team\xe2\x80\x99s Product Manager - they are responsible for the Why, and you are accountable for the How. You collaborate with business stakeholders, working with the Product Manager to deconstruct their requirements to model optimal, scalable software solutions. You will use your knowledge of Agile methodologies and ways of working along with tracking and using metrics to hold the team accountable for delivering quality on time.
• You are comfortable with the pace and trade-offs of a rapidly evolving scale-up (meaning: know how to take care of yourself and your team; get your work done without burning out; prioritise relentlessly; wear different hats when needed)
• Spend around 10-20% contributing to engineering initiatives like coaching circles, knowledge sharing and guilds or things like improving the engineering hiring processes

About you (Desired)

Engineering management is a varied and changing responsibility, meaning no person or team fits a cookie-cutter template. We\xe2\x80\x99re interested in the diversity of your experience leading and growing teams. Perhaps you\xe2\x80\x99ve thrived in rapidly evolving companies, or maybe you\xe2\x80\x99ve led teams that have cracked complex technology problems. This means we don\xe2\x80\x99t have a strict checklist of experience that we look for. However, your proven results in the following areas would make you even more suited to the role at Lendable:

• You\xe2\x80\x99ve operated in a B2C Finance environment, especially in consumer credit. Whilst it\xe2\x80\x99s not essential, understanding how to design, build and run a highly-available customer-facing service would help you be effective quickly.
• You\xe2\x80\x99ve delivered products in an FCA (or similar) regulated environment, but you value effectively supporting customers while meeting regulatory requirements without becoming bureaucratic or process-led.
• You thrive by leading and evolving cross-functional teams. You can draw on your experience of bringing together product, design, data science, domain experts and engineers to operate as one super-effective team. You have proven skills that help the team navigate and lean into the different perspectives and priorities each function brings to the team.
• Do you like to move between more hands-off and more hands-on roles as you evolve in your career? If so, we\xe2\x80\x99d love to hear about how that has helped you be more effective as an engineering manager. We value people who don\xe2\x80\x99t just look to climb hierarchies but appreciate what they can learn from applying their skills to the opportunities they find.
• You have been an engineering manager with hybrid or fully distributed teams. Despite the challenges, you understand how to support and nurture individuals to collaborate and deliver a high-performing team effectively. Why? We are rapidly evolving our mix of office-based and fully remote staff and would love you to bring your experiences of how to make this work effectively.

The interview process

We\xe2\x80\x99re not a corporate so we try our best to get things moving as quickly as possible. For this role we\xe2\x80\x99d expect:

• An introduction call with one of the leadership team (remote)
• Technical Interview (remote)
• People Management and Team Leadership interview (office)
• Project and Delivery interview (office) (Meet the team you will work with daily and the wider team as well)

Life at Lendable (also check out our Glassdoor page)

• The opportunity to scale up one of the world\xe2\x80\x99s most successful fintech companies.
• Best-in-class compensation including equity.
• You can work from home every Monday and Friday if you wish - on the other days, we all come together IRL to be together, build and exchange ideas.
• Our in-house chef prepares fresh, healthy lunches in the office every Tuesday-Thursday.
• We care for our Lendies\xe2\x80\x99 well-being both physically and mentally, so we offer the highest coverage when it comes to private health insurance.
• We organise an annual trip with the whole company, to celebrate our milestones and reflect on our achievements.
• We\'re an equal-opportunity employer and are looking to make Lendable the most inclusive and open workspace in London.