Business Development Lead - Europe - Engine by Starling

Engine by Starling, was born out of Starling: the UK’s first and leading digital bank. Today, Starling delivers intuitive, customer-centric tools to help over 4.6 million people and small businesses to be ‘good with money’. We believe that great technology has the ability to empower customers to save, spend and manage their money in a new and transformative way. Engine is on a mission to promote this philosophy around the world.

Engine is a cloud-native, bank-built SaaS platform. We provide a comprehensive and cloud-native  solution to power banks around the world, who share our ambition of building businesses designed to evolve, innovate, and meet growing customer demands. 

The SaaS technology platform is now available to banks, building societies and credit unions around the world, enabling them to benefit from the modern digital features and efficient back-office processes that has helped Starling to achieve its success.

At Engine, we follow five guiding principles: listen, keep it simple, do the right thing, own it, and aim for greatness. Having launched in 2022, we are a rapidly-growing organisation who adopts the same agile mindset as our technology. As such, we embrace change, the reimagination of processes and have cultivated an environment where our colleagues - and partners - can design, build and collaborate openly, with a strong degree of ownership and empowerment to get things done.

Hybrid Working

Engine is headquartered in London, with offices in Dublin, Sydney, Dubai, Toronto and New York. This role will be based in London.

International travel will be necessary on an ad hoc basis, depending on the client and nature of the engagement.

About the Role

The role offers the opportunity to own, manage and lead a European sub-region, scaling Business Development with the support of a focused central team. As the Sales Lead in Europe, you will be responsible for cultivating relationships at an executive level, overseeing client and partner engagements - including Discovery exercises and seeing programmes through to completion. 

This position also encompasses the opportunity to become a Client Relationship Director for Engine’s clients within the region, acting as a trusted advisor, partner and executive sponsor, ensuring their needs are heard and fulfilled during both Implementation and Run phases.

Our ambition is to build autonomous, highly-skilled teams, with a deep understanding of the local market, across the Nordics, Southern Europe and Central Eastern Europe. While you will drive deal execution within a defined European cluster, you will apply the central European value proposition and sales playbook consistently.

What you'll get to do

• Driving and defining the end-to-end execution plan of Engine’s market entry in geographies with high potential for digital banking transformation
• Developing and managing senior relationships with banking and ecosystem stakeholders, across your allocated cluster
• Progress and close opportunities using Engine’s established go-to-market model, providing executive sponsorship and expertise during commercial and contracting negotiations
• Ensuring consistency across Engine’s messaging, positioning and deal motion across geographies
• Co-ordinating closely with central Proposition, Solution Architecture and Enablement teams, to develop solutions which resonate strongly with the local market
• Providing structured, region-specific market feedback
• Scaling a local integrated team in alignment with business pipeline

• You possess 8+ years of senior enterprise or platform business development experience, across multiple markets
• You have a track record of closing complex deals, which engage multiple stakeholders across the business
• You have experience operating within centrally governed or matrixed organisations
• Banking or regulated industry exposure is strongly preferred (ideally retail or business banking), with a deep understanding of the challenges relating to bank IT systems, change management and transformation
• You have existing, trusted relationships with bank executives within the region
• You have experience in managing and scaling teams

Your skills

• You possess fluent English language skills, and are fluent in at least one relevant regional European language (French, German, Spanish, Polish or other)
• Speaking a range of European languages is a strong plus
• You are a collaborative and purpose-focused individual, who provides focus and foresight to a highly skilled team
• You are comfortable inheriting an existing playbook, while offering new approaches to enhance the broader European team’s ways of working
• You have a proven track record of strong stakeholder management across an array of cultures and values
• You are disciplined, resilient, and approach your work in a structured, logical manner

Interview process

Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you! Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious. In general you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:

• Interview and introduction to Engine’s VP - European Business Development (1 hour)
• A subsequent interview with Engine’s Chief Commercial Officer, with the potential to host the session in our London office (1 hour)
• An informal introduction to a portion of Engine’s European Business Development team (45 minutes)
• Final interview with Engine’s Chief Executive Officer (45 minutes)

• 33 days holiday (including public holidays, which you can take when it works best for you)
• An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
• Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off
• 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
• Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
• Life insurance at 4x your salary & group income protection
• Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
• Generous family-friendly policies
• Incentives refer a friend scheme
• Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
• Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing

You may be put off applying for a role because you don't tick every box. Forget that! While we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we're always open to discussion. So, if you're excited about working with us, but aren’t sure if you're 100% there yet, get in touch anyway. We’re on a mission to radically reshape banking – and that starts with our brilliant team. Whatever came before, we’re proud to bring together people of all backgrounds and experiences who love working together to solve problems.

Starling is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Starling are considered without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. When you provide us with this information, you are doing so at your own consent, with full knowledge that we will process this personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice. 

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