Director of Platform Engineering
Apply locations London, UK time type Full time posted on Posted 5 Days Ago job requisition id R13997
Job Title: Director of Platform Engineering
Job Description
UnderwriteMe is a UK based Insurtech creating disruptive SaaS solutions for the insurance industry. We are on a mission to make life insurance more widely accessible, providing technology to ensure people and their loved ones are protected when the inevitable happens.
We are wholly owned by Pacific Life, but operate as an autonomous business within the company. This gives us the best of both worlds - the freedom to act like a technology scale-up, with the stability of a large company meaning longer-term thinking and no last minute pivots to gain our next funding round. Pacific Life Re became 100% shareholder of UnderwriteMe in 2017 given the strategic synergy with its reinsurance business.
UnderwriteMe has two main products we sell to customers:
1. Decision Platform - a B2B enterprise platform that provides a best-in-market Underwriting Rules Engine used by over 30 insurers to power their underwriting decisions. The product is sold across UK & Ireland, Asia-Pacific and North America. The platform combines our engine with technology to source and process third-party information supporting underwriting decisions for insurers. We are already working on capabilities, powered by AI, to make these decisions even more efficient.
2. Protection Platform - a B2B2C marketplace used by over 15,000 advisors to power quoting and purchase of protection products in the UK. We currently deliver 16% of the UK markets protection policies and we are already working to increase our reach.
UnderwriteMe is part-way through a multi-year transformation to adopt a Product Operating Model, modernising our architecture and moving our products to a SaaS model. We still have much to do, and we’re looking for people to join us on this challenging and exciting journey.
Pacific Life and UnderwriteMe are both organisations focussed on creating a great environment in which to work. We recognise that attracting and retaining top talent is how we continue to improve the company. We pay well and as we are part of a mature organisation, we have a good benefits package. We value and celebrate diversity in our teams and continually work to celebrate the uniqueness of each person. We work in a hybrid model and we expect our leaders to flex where they work based on the needs of the company and their teams.
About The Role
We are looking for a Director of Engineering to join us to lead Engineering for our underlying engineering platform. We are going through a transformation in our platform, and this role will play a leadership role in getting us from where we are today to our future target state. Our two products currently run on a platform that has gone through some transformation, but the platform does not yet fulfil our vision of creating a delightful developer experience enabling quick, iterative delivery of value to our customers.
All of our infrastructure runs on AWS, with most of our applications being JVM based and running on Kubernetes. We use DataDog for centralised logging, monitoring and alerting and GitLab for source control. We generally already have a modern tech stack in place - but we’re not yet as effective as we need to be in getting the most value from this.
What you will be Doing
You will lead engineering for our platform engineering squad, reporting directly into the VP Engineering (who looks after all engineering for UnderwriteMe). You will play a second role in acting as a leader of our underlying engineering platform, providing a vision for the future direction of our platform. We operate using a hybrid model with some engineers in a centralised platform team and some directly in our products. Your role will be to enable both the creation of a single, consistent paved road for our teams, but also to provide knowledge and expertise within our product squads.
As the leader of the platform engineering squad, provide metrics and progress on our transformation to our Senior Leadership Team. You will also be a member of the Engineering leadership at UnderwriteMe, collaborating with other engineering leaders, working on improving our overall engineering function.
Your day to day will involve creation and execution of a roadmap of improvements that move our platform towards your defined target state. You will support your team, acting as a mentor and coach, helping the delivery of your vision. You will introduce new technologies where needed and remove technologies that provide little additional value. You look to optimise the cost of our platform, making this transparent and visible to teams and driving down our overall cost of delivering our products to customers. You will be comfortable acting as part of an out of hours, on call rota, supporting our transformation towards a ‘you build it, you run it’ target state.
About You
You are technically great, with a strong understanding of modern platform engineering and engineering leadership. You can sit with engineers and debate technical concepts but are also capable of describing these concepts to non engineers clearly. You thrive on moving between different levels of detail depending on what the situation needs. You understand engineering leadership best practices with regards to creating autonomous cross functional teams and how to measure their success. You are a visionary who drives the team, providing clarity and guidance to enable us to move at speed.
You believe in building out a modern engineering platform that can support the needs of engineers. You use customer research (i.e. engineer feedback / interviews etc) and your own experience to shape the future direction of the platform. You see the platform as a product and operate like a Product Manager of that product. You care deeply about creating a platform that enables engineers to move quickly - more so than what technology we are using to do this.
You are a creative problem solver. Working with your team, direct reports and peers, you directly solve problems. You care more about solving the problem than simply talking about it. You look for creative solutions to problems, understanding when to focus on dealing with the root causes and when a quick fix will suffice.
You are a curious coach. You love helping others to improve. Your curiosity means you want to understand why things work the way that they do, before you look to improve them. Your coaching extends across all your relationships and you’re comfortable coaching people both within and outside of engineering.
You have a growth mindset. You respectfully challenge the status-quo. You are continually looking to improve yourself and your teams. You actively seek out and give feedback and do this in a way that builds strong relationships with your team and peers. You think about working iteratively, using experiments and data to drive how you make decisions.
You thrive in a fast paced environment with large amounts of uncertainty. You are comfortable working to transform an organisation, accepting this means that everything is not working perfectly today.
Technical Requirements
You are an experienced platform engineering leader, building an engineering platform on a cloud based infrastructure, an extra bonus if you have done this on AWS using Kubernetes. You are an expert with IaC (bonus if its Terraform) and you have a passion for automating everything. You have a strong grounding in core computer science principles and software engineering practices. You understand the full software engineering lifecycle and the role that platform engineering plays in this. You don’t just spin up infrastructure and tune out when an engineer mentions that their build isn’t working well. You care about creating an environment in which engineers can thrive and get enjoyment from making people’s lives easier.
You have experience in a regulated environment, ideally working with standards such as ISO 27001 / SOC2 and know how to structure a platform and process to meet the needs of those standards. You are comfortable facing off to internal risk and compliance teams and acting as a subject matter expert in external audits. You are comfortable working on disaster recovery and business continuity planning.
You’ve been working in teams following modern software delivery methodologies, such as agile, lean, and DevOps. Extra bonus - You’ve built SaaS products and understand the patterns used to build them.
If you feel that you’ve met most of the requirements above, even if it isn’t everything, please do reach out and apply.
What we offer
Here at UnderwriteMe, you have the chance to work on solving complex problems that will change how lives are protected. This means working in an environment where you can really make a difference and where the opportunities for continuous learning and development are abound.
Unlike many other scale-up Tech companies, we have the financial backing of our successful parent company. This means we can offer a number of benefits and programmes to reward and recognise our employees’ contributions, which reflect the value we place on our employees. From competitive salaries and bonus schemes to wellness offerings and a hybrid working approach that facilitates a healthy work-life balance.
We also take pride in giving back to the community and offer rewarding volunteering and social responsibility opportunities.
About UnderwriteMe
UnderwriteMe is an Insurtech software business and subsidiary of Pacific Life Re (PL Re), a global life and pensions reinsurance firm. We have a vision to help everyone purchase protection insurance by using data and disruptive technology to transform our partners and markets in order to make their underwriting processes as quick and efficient as possible.
Our core products are:
• a best-in-market Underwriting Rules Engine which can be used to automate any structured data within the underwriting journey, and which is sold in the UK & Ireland, Asia-Pacific and North America
• the Protection Platform, an end-to-end quote and buy marketplace for Protection in the UK
Working for UnderwriteMe
Joining UnderwriteMe means being part of a technology company that is committed to bringing a fresh and dynamic approach to insurance. You’d be working with a team of highly technical experts made up of people with backgrounds in software, fintech, and insurance. Every person in our global team is valued for the unique qualities they bring to our business and we seek to build their expertise and support their individual ambitions at every step.
Of course, we take our work seriously and we know our team can operate under great pressure. We work hard and thrive on achievement, but we also know how to have fun and relax too. We regularly host a range of team building days to strengthen our team's connection with each other and reflect on their successes.
Providing employees with a healthy work-life balance is very important to our culture. We have a wide range of employee benefits and we host regular social activities and wellbeing initiatives. We are also committed to supporting our employee's involvement in their communities, by actively fundraising, hosting charity events, and overseeing volunteering opportunities.
Benefits (Only for Permanent and Fixed Term Employees)
• Stakeholder Pension Scheme
• Life Assurance
• Subsidised Gym Membership
• Private Medical Insurance
• Season Ticket Loan
• Eye Care
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Group Income Protection
• Wellness Benefits
As part of our commitment to accessibility for all, UnderwriteMe will, upon the request of the applicant, provide accommodation during the recruitment process to ensure equal access to applicants with disabilities. Please contact us about your needs, and we will consult with you to ensure suitable accommodation is provided.
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