Chief Technology Officer, Smart Pension

Salary not provided
React
JavaScript
Ruby
Rails
Ruby on Rails
Expert level
London
Smart Pension

Workplace pension plans for businesses

Open for applications

Smart Pension

Workplace pension plans for businesses

501-1000 employees

B2BEnterprisePersonal financeInvestingFinancial Services

Open for applications

Salary not provided
React
JavaScript
Ruby
Rails
Ruby on Rails
Expert level
London

501-1000 employees

B2BEnterprisePersonal financeInvestingFinancial Services

Company mission

To transform retirement, savings, and financial wellbeing, across all generations, around the world.

Role

Who you are

  • We are now taking the next big leap forward, which creates an exceptional opportunity for a Chief Technology Officer who is looking to make a real difference through engineering excellence, people-focused leadership, and enjoys creating change both within a business and the wider world
  • We are looking for someone with a modern and deeply technical engineering background that includes private equity backed companies in the finance sector, transformation of engineering practices to be more commercially and bottom-line focused, and, ideally, large data intensive platforms
  • Our culture is very important to us, so we are looking for a leader who understands the meaning of “thank you” and who leads and influences a team, not manages it
  • Demonstrable experience as a Director, Head of Engineering or a CTO
  • Proven background in a fast scaling technology business and financial services in your recent career history. Background in wealth management or insurance platforms at a FinTech or InsureTech would be an advantage but is not mandatory
  • Strong leadership skills – this is a leadership role that is all about leading teams and getting the best from our incredible Engineers
  • Strong understanding of software development methodologies, architectural patterns, and best practices
  • Effective team player and collaborator able to work seamlessly across departments
  • Strong experience and governance across back-end & front-end development. Ability to discern right from wrong in the context of an engineering decision
  • Able to lead complex projects – manage multiple stakeholders and deliver to targets
  • Strong communicator – This role requires someone to be very comfortable communicating across the business and at all levels
  • Experience with API based application development is essential
  • Proven experience in software architecture and leading large-scale transformation projects
  • Personable and appreciative, leading teams with a people-first approach
  • Familiarity with modern DevOps tools and practices, including CI/CD pipelines, containerization, and infrastructure as code

What the job involves

  • Smart is one of the world’s leading technology providers in its market (a $62 trillion AUM global market) looking for a Chief Technology Officer to help us push forward on the next step of our journey
  • As Chief Technology Officer at Smart, we require someone who brings with them a people-first approach to leadership, by working closely with their senior Engineering Managers to deliver Engineering to the highest level
  • We have a strong focus on culture within the engineering team, which has helped produce a clean code base and underpins our CI/CD pipeline and agile train
  • Lead the change of the technology team ensuring highly efficient and value-driven output by adopting agile thinking and processes
  • Oversee the overall engineering team, including developers, QA, infrastructure and the service desk, across all territories, ensuring effective collaboration and alignment
  • Collaborate with Solutions and Product Directors to streamline the process from product conception to delivery
  • Review and assess current engineering practices and implement continuous improvement programs to drive faster and leaner development cycles
  • Continuously enhance and develop automated test coverage and test automation to maintain and improve the platform’s codebase, aiming to exceed the current 96% test coverage
  • Balance architectural desire against project delivery - tradeoffs between performance, delivery, reliability & scalability whilst you map against business objectives and deadlines
  • Be a technologist with knowledge of front-end languages such as JavaScript and React frameworks or backend languages such as Ruby on Rails. Help our team grow and develop
  • Act as the representative of the engineering team to the wider business, keeping them informed and engaged in the development processes and progress updates
  • As you will be working closely with the team you will also manage appraisals, salary reviews and day to day workloads
  • Be in charge of the technology and people budget within engineering and work with the procurement function to regularly review and optimise our external spend
  • Lead and develop the Engineering organisation which includes our nearshore teams as well as our direct teams
  • Proactively identify and solve any barriers, risks and issues preventing success
  • Ensure effective budget planning, resource forecasting, internal reporting and engagement in all relevant governance forums and processes
  • Regular travel will be required, especially to Poland where the majority of engineers will be based

Salary benchmarks

Our take

Having the financial stability to retire is something that plays on the minds of every employee around the world, a problem that is often managed through pension plans. However, existing pension providers generally follow a "one size fits all" approach, preventing room for plans customised for businesses and for multiple countries of residence.

Smart Pension provides pension plans for businesses and organisations, currently offering plans for the UK, 401(k) and retirement plans for the USA, in addition to savings and retirement plans for Ireland, Australia, and Dubai. The company provides a retirement platform named Keystone to governments, enterprises, and financial institutions, focussing heavily on a flexible and bespoke approach to retirement plans.

Whilst pension plans are accessible to most organisations, Smart Pension recognises how unified and single-country approaches are not sufficiently flexible for modern enterprises. By providing a custom pension creation platform and plans for retirement and savings for a range of countries, the company aims to provide a modern solution for the pensions of international corporations which are specifically designed for their business.

Freddie headshot

Freddie

Company Specialist

Insights

Top investors

Few candidates hear
back within 2 weeks

-5% employee growth in 12 months

Company

Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)

May 2023

$95m

SERIES E

Jul 2022

$52.3m

GROWTH EQUITY VC

Total funding: $387.3m

Company benefits

  • 25 days holiday per year, plus bank holidays. One extra day holiday after two years and then every year up to 30 days holiday
  • Pension scheme using salary sacrifice, Smart Pension will match your contributions up to 5% of your salary
  • £500 personal development allowance every year to spend on courses or conferences or training materials
  • Health insurance with Equipsme, including Dental, Eyecare and EAP
  • Death in service with Unum (4 x base salary)
  • Access to PerkBox and Smart Rewards
  • Enhanced maternity and paternity (maternity - 6 months fully paid / paternity - 3 weeks fully paid)
  • Five week sabbatical after five years employment
  • Season ticket loans
  • Cycle2Work scheme
  • Free nails and barber once a month
  • Massage twice a month (only £5 for all colleagues) with the money going to Smart's chosen charity
  • Free snacks, fruit and drinks

Company values

  • We have a clean sheet of paper - It’s important to always look at things with a fresh perspective, and not just do things a certain way because “that’s the way it’s always been done”. We have an opportunity to disrupt and massively improve the industry. So let’s be creative, innovative and do things differently – savers will be the winners
  • We work with other amazing businesses and prosper together - We shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel if we don’t need to. There are lots of businesses which do things well and many useful products that can help us. We can often get a bigger slice of the cake by working with other excellent partners – so we all benefit and win
  • We work in the medium to long term - It’s not always about quick wins. We prefer to think in a long-term way and take time to do things properly. This is the best way to build real value into a business – for our clients, members, strategic partners, colleagues and shareholders.
  • We execute great ideas and deliver constantly - Great ideas and creativity are very important ingredients of successful, innovative businesses. The right planning, strategy and direction of travel are essential too. But all these things are useless without outstanding execution and delivery. Smart is a business that aims to constantly and relentlessly deliver top quality.
  • We are compliant and we do things properly - Non-compliance is categorically not the Smart way of doing things. So we approach and deliver everything we do to meet the highest levels of regulatory oversight. This is a red line in the organisation – we take it extremely seriously
  • We favour technological solutions - Most business processes that take time and effort can be done quickly with software – without the risk of human error. This frees up our time to work on more interesting challenges and opportunities that add much greater value across the organisation
  • We’re determined - We’ve fought very hard for some of our biggest successes and proved it was the right thing to do. We will continue to advocate for Smart, even though sometimes we’ll need to run through walls to achieve success
  • We want happy and good people in our team - Our people make Smart great. To keep us great, we need to make Smart a place where talented and ambitious people want to work. We're a fair, flexible employer and we always take suggestions for how we can improve – in return, we expect our team to work hard and deliver to a high standard and in a reasonable time frame. We expect people to treat one another with respect and dignity. We discourage political game-playing, grandstanding and petty rivalries – these are a waste of life. We don’t expect team members to sit at their desks pretending to work late if their work is done, and we are flexible – go to see the dentist during work hours if you need to! Above all, we want people to enjoy being part of Smart

Company HQ

Marylebone, London, UK

Leadership

Andrew Evans

(CEO & Co-Founder)

Experience as Managing Director of Wealth for Lloyds Banking Group. Non-executive Director for Trulience since 2019.

Will Wynne

(Co-Founder)

Experience as Senior Manager of Direct & Onsite Marketing for eBay. Chairman and Co-founder of ArenaFlowers.com since 2006.

Diversity & Inclusion at Smart Pension

  • Smart Pension has a dynamic, open, friendly and inclusive culture, and this is something we are very proud of. We ship software continuously. The team is already highly collaborative, eager to learn and try new things. Smart Pension is committed to crafting an inclusive work environment with a diverse workforce. You will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, disability or age

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