Head of Engineering, Cards

The role

You will lead the engineering organisation across the UK, EU and India to shape the Cards platform. You will focus on product and member experience, AI-led engineering, and platform and commercial ownership.

What you will do

• Lead and develop engineering managers and senior engineers across distributed teams.
• Define the technical strategy and architecture for the Cards domain.
• Drive reliability, scalability and cost efficiency across card issuing and processing.
• Embed AI-assisted and agentic development practices across engineering teams.
• Partner with Product, Design and Commercial teams to prioritise and deliver the roadmap.
• Own technical relationships with card processors and schemes, including integrations and certifications.
• Strengthen engineering capabilities at Staff and senior IC levels.
• Collaborate with other engineering leaders on shared infrastructure.

Required qualifications

• Experience leading engineering managers and large engineering teams.
• Strong experience in cards, payments or banking.
• Deep understanding of card issuing, processing and card scheme operations.
• Experience building and operating distributed engineering teams across multiple locations.
• Proven ability to improve engineering delivery, productivity and quality.
• Experience partnering with Product, Commercial and Finance leaders on business outcomes and unit economics.
• Experience managing third-party technology providers and strategic partnerships.
• Strong understanding of microservices, event-driven architecture and cloud-native systems.
• Experience with relational databases, distributed systems and large-scale transaction processing.
• Ability to challenge architectural decisions and engage in technical and production-level discussions.
• Hands-on experience with AI coding agents and their application across the software development lifecycle.
• Ability to set technical direction and drive execution through engineering leaders.

Nice to have

• Experience on either the issuer or processor side

Benefits

• Competitive salary and share options
• Generous annual leave on top of bank holidays
• Paid maternity, paternity, and adoption leave
• Extended unpaid and paid leave options after completing milestone years
• Access to salary sacrifice benefits like Nursery and Cycle to Work
• Comprehensive Private family insurance plan
• Comprehensive accidental and life insurance protection
• Access to therapy sessions, courses, meditations, and workshops
• Pension scheme on eligible earnings
• Paid days annually for volunteering or personal growth
• Annual budget for books, courses, coaching, and more
• Work from abroad for up to 90 days annually

About the company

Tide helps SMEs save time and money by offering business accounts, banking services, and administrative solutions. The company supports over 2 million members globally across the UK, Germany and France.