Principal Engineer (Director), Quality & Reliability

About Tide

At Tide, we are building a finance & admin platform designed to save small businesses time and money. We provide our members with business accounts and related banking services, but also a comprehensive set of connected administrative solutions from invoicing to accounting.

Launched in 2017, Tide is now the leading business financial platform in the UK with 575,000 SME members (10% market share) and more than 250,000 SMEs in India. Headquartered in London, Tide has over 1,800 Tideans across the UK, Bulgaria, India, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine and Germany. 

Tide is rapidly growing, expanding into new markets and always looking for passionate and driven people. Join us in our mission to empower small businesses and help them save time and money.  

About the role 

As the Principal Engineer (Director) - Quality & Reliability, you will be a hands-on leader. You will oversee several key engineering teams, including Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Quality, Client Platform, and Engineering Productivity. Your primary goal will be to develop and implement strategies that enhance system reliability, streamline engineering processes, and ensure the highest quality of our software products.

This role is designed for a "player-coach" who combines strong technical skills with leadership capabilities. You will be expected to engage deeply with technical challenges, contributing directly to code and architectural decisions, while also guiding your teams toward achieving strategic goals.

Key Responsibilities:

• Strategic Vision and Leadership: Develop a strategic vision for quality, reliability, and productivity across Tide. Set clear, measurable goals for each team and drive initiatives that align with our business objectives.
• Hands-On Technical Leadership: Engage directly in technical discussions and decisions, contributing to the design and architecture of complex systems. Lead by example through active participation in code reviews, debugging sessions, and development of critical software components.
• Quality Assurance and Testing Strategy: Lead the QA team in creating robust automated testing frameworks and integrating these into our CI/CD pipelines. Promote a proactive quality mindset, ensuring that all software releases are rigorously tested and meet the highest standards.
• Site Reliability Engineering: Guide the SRE team in developing and maintaining scalable, highly available, and secure systems. Implement effective monitoring, logging, and alerting mechanisms to ensure rapid detection and resolution of issues, minimising downtime and improving system reliability.
• Client Platform Enablement: Oversee the Client Platform team in building and optimising tools, frameworks, and libraries that accelerate the work of web and mobile client engineers. Ensure that these internal tools are easy to use, well-documented, and enhance the overall developer experience and productivity.
• Engineering Productivity Improvements: Lead initiatives to enhance engineering productivity, such as improving development workflows, optimising build and deployment processes, and automating repetitive tasks. Work closely with teams to identify bottlenecks and implement solutions that improve overall efficiency.
• Data-Driven Optimisation: Utilise data and analytics to assess engineering performance and identify areas for improvement. Implement metrics and KPIs that drive continuous improvement in quality, reliability, and productivity.
• Mentoring and Development: Act as a mentor and coach to engineering managers and team members, promoting a culture of continuous learning and development. Encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams to build a high-performing engineering organisation.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate closely with Product, Infosec, Cloud, and other cross-functional teams to ensure alignment on priorities and strategies. Foster an environment of open communication and teamwork to achieve shared goals.
• Incident Response and Management: Support the response to major incidents, coordinating efforts across teams to quickly resolve issues, conduct thorough root cause analysis, and implement preventive measures to avoid recurrence.

What we are looking for

• Extensive experience in a senior technical leadership role with a strong foundation in software engineering, systems engineering, or a related field.
• Proven track record of leading SRE, QA, or engineering productivity teams, ideally in a fintech or similarly demanding environment.
• Strong technical proficiency in programming languages (e.g., Python, Java, C++, etc.) and hands-on experience in software development, debugging, and optimisation.
• In-depth understanding of cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), containerisation technologies (Docker, Kubernetes), and modern platform engineering practices.
• Demonstrated success in driving quality, reliability, and productivity improvements in complex engineering environments.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with experience leveraging data to drive strategic decision-making.
• Exceptional leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with a proven ability to build and lead high-performing teams.
• A proactive, hands-on approach with a strong focus on innovation and continuous improvement.

What you’ll get in return:

• A competitive salary
• Share options
• Flexible working options
• 25 days holiday with the option to take 5 extra days of unpaid leave per year
• 3 days paid volunteering or L&D time off per year
• Personal L&D budget of £1,000 professional L&D budget per year 
• Group Life Insurance, Vitality Health and Dental Insurance
• Spacious brand-new office by Old Street station, in London, with an all-day snacks bar
• Enhanced family-friendly leave
• Access to a global mental wellbeing platform that provides 1:1 video therapy sessions with accredited therapists and unlimited chat therapy sessions
• Work from home budget
• Team socials - virtual and physical events
• Sabbatical leave

Tidean Ways of Working

At Tide, we champion a flexible workplace model that supports both in-person and remote work to cater to the specific needs of our different teams. 

While remote work is supported, we believe in the power of face-to-face interactions to foster team spirit and collaboration. Our offices are designed as hubs for innovation and team-building, where we encourage regular in-person gatherings to foster a strong sense of community. 

Tide is a place for everyone

At Tide, we believe that we can only succeed if we let our differences enrich our culture. Our Tideans come from a variety of backgrounds and experience levels. We consider everyone irrespective of their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, veteran, neurodiversity or differently-abled status. We celebrate diversity in our workforce as a cornerstone of our success. Our commitment to a broad spectrum of ideas and backgrounds is what enables us to build products that resonate with our members’ diverse needs and lives. 

We are One Team and foster a transparent and inclusive environment, where everyone’s voice is heard.

#LI-AC1 #LI-Hybrid #LI-Remote