A SaaS platform built by banking experts.
Engine by Starling is the technology that powers Starling. A cloud-native digital banking platform, which we are now offering via a Software-as-a-Service model to banks around the world seeking to transform their customer experience and back-office operations.
Starling was the first Bank in Britain to be founded by a woman, Anne Boden, back in 2014, and as such, looking after and building our diverse teams is important to us, and we’re investing in various programmes to help us.
Starling has seen exceptional growth and success, and a large part of that is down to the fact that we have built our own modern technology from the ground up.
The only British bank founded by a woman. You don’t just ‘start a bank’. At least, that’s what our founder was repeatedly told. In truth, the sceptics had a point. No British woman had ever founded a bank. Nobody’s founded one since.
Sponsorship
We have worked with Code First Girls for a number of years, who offer free coding courses to women and non-binary people. Read here about 3 women who Starling sponsored to go through the 12-week CFG degree.
Gender balance
Starling is a proud supporter of the Women in Finance Charter, having become a founding signatory in 2017. We believe that this voluntary commitment made by HM Treasury and signatory firms to improve the gender balance in the financial services industry.
Returners
We also partnered with Career Returners, an organisation that helps people return to the workplace, who support women and men in finding placements, following a significant period out of the workplace, usually due to caring responsibilities or family commitments.
We’re growing fast – and no two days here at Engine are quite the same. We care about getting stuff done and our culture is decidedly entrepreneurial in spirit (you’ll be encouraged to pitch your ideas, however big or bold!).
Here at Engine, as part of Starling, everything we do falls under 5 core values
Smart people thrive when they’re given freedom. Our people like to get their hands dirty, figure out and take ownership.
We’ve reshaped banking in the UK with Starling. Now we’re on a mission to radically reshape banking in markets around the world – sharing the best-in-class digital banking platform we’ve built.
In order to make sure that Starling is an accessible employer, we offer part-time and flexible working roles, as we acknowledge that the traditional 9-5 doesn’t work for everyone. Evolving from the rigid rules of the past, we understand the world of work has changed dramatically and every individual needs something different, so we aim to be as adaptable as possible. Prioritising diversity and inclusion is more important now than ever, and we hope that fostering a truly inclusive workplace will allow us to ‘Aim for Greatness’ together.
including public holidays which you can take when works for you.
As an app-based bank, we’re not just part of the male-dominated finance industry, but the male-dominated tech industry too. And that’s why gender equality isn’t just another webpage to us. It’s absolutely central to who we are, and the decisions we make.
42% of our senior managers are women
This is significantly higher than the fintech industry average of 30%, and higher than the UK banking average of 40%. Our senior management includes the Board, the Executive Committee and certain people who report into the Executive Committee.
1 in 3 of our new tech hires are women
Tech is still an overwhelmingly male-industry – only 26% of the tech workforce are women – but we’re trying to change that. Over a third of our new hires between April 2024 and April 2025 were women, a big improvement on our previous figure of 24%.
Progress is built on transparency
We’ve reported our gender pay gap from day one, before we legally had to. In 2025 we reduced our median pay gap, used to measure ‘typical’ employees, from 9.1% to 8.4%. That’s solid progress, and a significantly lower gap than many UK banks.
But there’s still lots to do. Our mean pay gap shows that men still earn more on average than women, partly because more men hold senior roles.
The Always Open forum was created in the spirit of ‘Aiming for Greatness’ and ‘Doing the Right Thing’, focusing and working on diversity and inclusion; with the overall aim of making Starling the bank with the best approach to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
The forum is made up of volunteers from across all areas of Starling and Engine by Starling, who in turn run the individual network groups that support different areas of diversity.
We currently have five networks; Bend the Bank (LGBTQ+), Embrace (Race and Ethnicity), Mental Health Positive (Mental Health), United Abilities (Disability) and With Women (Women).
The networks plan a variety of events throughout the year to mark national and international awareness days (and other normal days too!), and to foster a sense of community and belonging for everyone, regardless of their background.
United Abilities
With Women
Embrace
Bend the Bank
Mental Health Positive
At Engine by Starling our Tech team is excited about helping us take our award winning banking platform to countries all over the world, regardless of what their primary tech stack may be.
Our Tech groups are organised in such a way so you’ll have the chance to be involved in scoping work, architecture, implementation and running of everything your team is responsible for! We have a pretty flat structure, so you need to be prepared to get involved in lots of different areas. We encourage people to own their career and reach for what makes them happy and fulfilled.
We are hiring plenty of super-talented people at the moment, so check out our live roles here.
