Highlighted company: Engine by Starling

Engine by Starling publishes the salary. Their live Staff Software Engineer role on cord runs from £120,000 to £140,000, and the number is in the advert rather than saved for the first call.

Two people run the account, and between them they have started 429 conversations with engineers. Here is who Engine are, and why it's one of the more interesting engineering jobs in UK financial technology.

Who Engine by Starling are

Starling Bank built its own banking platform from scratch in 2016. Engine is the business that now offers that same platform to banks around the world.

Engine was set up in 2022 as its own company within the Starling group, with its own leadership team. It's run by Sam Everington, who joined Starling in 2016 as one of its first 20 employees and is a software developer by background. Tom Beresford is CTO.

Banks in four countries now run on Engine: Salt Bank in Romania, AMP Bank in Australia, Tangerine in Canada and SBS Bank in New Zealand. Tangerine brought its business banking offering live on Engine in October 2026. Around 400 people work at Engine, across the UK, Ireland, North America, Australia and Dubai.

How they perform on cord

The numbers below are from cord, on 6 October 2026.

• £120,000 to £140,000, published on the live Staff Software Engineer role.

• A 100% response rate on the live role.

• 429 conversations started with engineers by a team of two.

• On cord since 2024.

Publishing a six figure band on a team lead role is still something most companies avoid. Engine does it, so an engineer can decide whether the conversation is worth having before starting it.

Why engineers stay once they get there

Engineers run the company. Engine's leadership was deliberately built from technologists, and the final interview for an engineering role is with the CTO or Deputy CTO.

They ship constantly. Engine releases 40 to 60 times a day, making small changes to production every day rather than saving them up.

The platform runs real banks in four countries. The same codebase is configured for a digital retail bank in Romania, a small business bank in Australia, a Canadian bank with around two million customers and a New Zealand mutual. The stack is Java on AWS and Google Cloud, with Kubernetes and Terraform.

A clear, published interview process. A conversation with the talent team, a 45 minute interview with an engineer, a take home technical test, a 90 minute technical interview, and a final 45 minutes with the CTO or Deputy CTO. They aim to respond within seven days, and the whole process takes three to four weeks.

The package, in plain numbers. 33 days holiday including public holidays, plus your birthday off. A 10% company pension contribution. Private medical insurance through Vitality. Life insurance at four times salary and income protection. 16 hours of paid volunteering a year. Hybrid working, with Engine looking for people within commuting distance of one of its offices.

The team doing the hiring

Two people, and between them they have started 429 conversations with engineers on cord.

• Jake Pedlingham, Talent Acquisition Partner. 302 conversations since 2024.

• Jack Axton, Talent Acquisition Specialist. 127 conversations since joining the account in 2025.

Engine is planning to add around 150 people this year, more than 100 of them in London.

Highlighted Companies is a series of hand picked companies on cord. Data sourced from cord, October 2026.