Staff Engineer - Ops Platform

About Marshmallow

We started Marshmallow when we found out how unfair insurance prices are for people who move to the UK. All because the industry hasn’t given this huge cohort of people a second’s thought, and isn’t set up to price them properly. 

We saw an opportunity to do things differently, so we made it our mission to back the ones who step outside the norm. Since we started, we’ve helped 100,000s of people get a fairer deal on their car insurance. Using technology, we serve people that are often overlooked by financial services companies, solving important problems for people who need it most. 

We know there are millions of marginalised customers out there. And we know that they face unique problems that most companies aren’t even aware of. We believe that our future is helping these people by learning about their experiences, and building our company around their needs. And there are strong signs that there’s a need for a company like us. Earlier this year we hit profitability, which is a huge milestone, but the most exciting thing is that we’re only just getting started.

How we work

We’re really proud of the culture we’ve created. We push for progress every day, because we know that we’ll only hit big milestones by taking lots of smaller steps. We’re always open to helping our team mates, sharing our ideas, experience and knowledge to solve problems together. We take risks, think creatively and experiment relentlessly to meet our customer’s needs, and never pass blame when things go wrong. We encourage people at all levels to take ownership of their work, and to be bold in challenging how we do things. Everyone has a voice and the opportunity to make an impact. 

And autonomy and ownership are only possible with clear direction. That’s why we collaborate to do in-depth planning twice a year, and make sure we leave with clear goals and objectives that flow from top to bottom. To make sure we’re as aligned as possible across functions, most of our work rolls up into four tribes; Acquisition, Retention, Claims and Pricing, Underwriting & Fraud. Each tribe has multiple teams embedded in it, working cross-functionally to do great work.

We’re so excited for all of the challenges up ahead, and we need more people to help us tackle them! If life at Marshmallow sounds like it could be for you, explore our culture handbook or read our blog to find out more.

Engineering at Marshmallow

Our engineers are at the heart of the solutions. They work on product builds from start to finish, solving lots of challenges to help us build fast and scale up! Our engineers cover a range of skills across frontend, backend, fullstack, iOS and android and work alongside designers, data scientists, researchers and product managers within our product teams.

Our product teams include: the Growth team, the Efficiency team, and the Claims team (to name a few!) Each team sets its own roadmap and actively pushes our codebase forward.

About the Ops Platform team you’ll be joining

The Staff Engineer role sits within the Retention Tribe, which is responsible for the profitability of Marshmallow’s active customers. We focus on key metrics like LTV, retention rate, NPS, products per customer, and average revenue per customer. The tribe consists of cross-functional teams including Pricing, Operations, Marketing, CRM, Data, Product, and Engineering. Our goal is to differentiate ourselves in the insurance market by truly valuing our customers, offering distinctive products and unbeatable prices to build long-lasting customer loyalty.

Managing insurance policies is complex, involving support for claims, policy changes, payment issues, and more. These processes drive significant costs that impact customer pricing. Over the next three years, our strategic goal is to more than double the efficiency of these support functions while dramatically enhancing the in-policy customer experience.

As a Staff Engineer in our tribe, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping new 0-to-1 product capabilities while optimizing conversion and retention journeys for existing offerings. Your technical leadership will be essential in driving a scalable, efficient vision that enhances customer experience and supports competitive pricing by reducing operational costs.

What you’ll be doing

• Drive Technical Excellence: Lead the design and implementation of innovative, secure, and performant solutions. Focus on redundancy, scalability, and system resilience while enforcing best coding practices and security protocols.

• Influence and Lead by Example: Mentor engineers, guide technical direction, and set high standards for the team, pushing for quality results without direct management responsibilities.

• Strategic Thinking: Align technical work with long-term business goals, evaluating build vs. buy decisions, investigating external vendors, and working closely with AWS or other cloud platforms to ensure scalable and cost-efficient solutions.

• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work with product managers, data scientists, and non-technical stakeholders to prioritize and deliver projects that meet both technical and business needs. Provide visibility into technical progress and translate complex concepts into actionable insights.

• Cross-Domain Problem Solving: Tackle complex challenges across multiple teams, proactively optimizing systems, and solving critical issues that balance technical and business constraints.

Who you are
To thrive in this role, you'll demonstrate autonomy, ownership, and flexibility in a fast-paced environment, and bring:

• Technical Mastery: Deep expertise in your domain and a broad understanding of adjacent fields, enabling sound architectural decisions and solutions to complex challenges.

• Strategic Vision: You think long-term, aligning technical decisions with business goals, and ensuring solutions are scalable and future-proof.

• Influence and Mentorship: You guide technical discussions, mentor engineers, and elevate the performance of those around you.

• Communication and Collaboration: You excel at translating technical details into business impacts and work seamlessly with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Problem-Solving Prowess: You solve complex problems with practical solutions that balance technical and business needs.

• Resilience and Adaptability: You thrive in a fast-paced environment and maintain high-quality output amid changing priorities.

• (Bonus) Domain Expertise: Relevant domain knowledge helps you make informed decisions and address industry-specific challenges.

What we're looking for from you

• 5+ years as a senior software engineer, with at least 2 years in a technical leadership or staff engineer role, delivering scalable, high-quality solutions.

• Strong expertise in backend development, system design, and architecture, with experience guiding complex technical decisions.

• Experience with public cloud technologies (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) is a plus.

• Excellent communication skills, able to translate technical concepts into business impacts.

• Proven experience mentoring engineers and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

• Proactive problem-solver, with a passion for driving innovation aligned with business goals.

Our Tech Stack

• Java 21 μServices

• Spring Boot with Spring Cloud

• Dynamo DB

• Terraform

• Docker

• AWS Fargate

• Event Sourcing

Perks of the job

• Flexi-office working – Spend at least 2 days a week with your team in our Budapest office. The rest is up to you! 🏠 Plus you have 4 weeks of Work From Anywhere to use, with no need to come to the office.

• Competitive bonus scheme - designed to reward and recognise high performance 🌟

• 4-week fully paid sabbatical after being with us for 4 years 🌍

• Learning and development – Personal budgets for books and training courses to help you grow in your role. Plus 2 days a year - on us! - to further your skillset 🤓

• Mental wellbeing support – Access therapy and mental health sessions through Oliva 💚

• SZÉP card - Budget to spend on meals, leisure and accommodation 🏝

• Medicover Blue Package - An exclusive pass to top-notch healthcare services 🩺

• All You Can Move membership OR Monthly BKK pass - Unleashing your inner fitness guru or having a hassle-free commute - we've got you covered! 🤝

• Company-wide Marshmallow Engineering Hackathon twice a year 💻 

Plus a monthly team social budget, bi-weekly office lunches and Office tea, coffee and snacks!

Our process

We break it up into 4 stages:

• Initial call with our Tech Talent Acquisition Specialist (30- 45 mins)

• An interview where you will discuss your previous experience with one of our Engineering leaders (1 hour)

• Tech assessment followed by a technical interview with one of our Tech Leads + one other Engineer (1,5 hours)

• A culture interview to check that your work style fits our processes and values (1 hour)

We’ll let you know if you’re invited to an interview or not. But, as a small team with a lot of applications to consider, we can’t give individual feedback on each application

Everyone belongs at Marshmallow

At Marshmallow, we want to hire people from all walks of life with the passion and skills needed to help us achieve our company mission. To do that, we're committed to hiring without judgement, prejudice or bias.

We encourage everyone to apply for our open roles. Gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or background does not affect how we process job applications.

We're working hard to build an inclusive culture that empowers our people to do their best work, have fun and feel that they belong.

Recruitment privacy policy

We take privacy seriously here at Marshmallow. Our Recruitment privacy notice explains how we process and handle your personal data. To find out more please view it here.