Head of Software Engineering

At Urban Jungle , we’re making insurance fair - to people, planet and wallets. We're one of the fastest-growing businesses in the UK, working to fix one of the biggest industries in the world.

We put customers at the heart of everything we do, using data and technology to make insurance simple, flexible, and affordable.

We care about our impact on the planet, becoming a B Corp in 2022 and offsetting our carbon emissions every year.

So far, we’ve helped 300,000 customers get better insurance and become one of the top-rated home insurance providers in the UK.

We placed 1st in Tempo's 2024 award for best startup to work for, and are in the top 10 of Deloitte’s Fast 50. We’ve raised over £43m in funding to date to help us with our mission.

We’re looking for people to join our team of kind, talented people on a mission to change the insurance industry for good.

As a Head of Software Engineering at Urban Jungle, you’ll play a leading role in our 16 strong engineering team whilst collaborating across the business to ensure we continue to build products that delight our customers, working on everything from shipping new commercial partnerships to improving our claims experience, to building a world class technology platform.

You’ll hit the ground running, embedding with one of our existing teams so you can build key relationships across the business, get up to speed with our tech stack quickly, and start shipping valuable features within your first few weeks. We’ll start you off in areas where you have the most experience and then gradually give you exposure to the rest of our services to build out your expertise.

In this role, you’ll work closely with our Engineering Director, Ben , as well as getting lots of exposure to our senior leadership team - who’ve previously led some of the world’s fastest-growing businesses - as you play a pivotal role in achieving our company’s growth plans.

• You’ll be a key member of our engineering leadership group, working with them to develop our engineering strategy and refine our team-level approach. As part of this, you will be responsible for managing the day-to-day of a large team of engineers as well as overseeing some of our core processes and areas of our technology.
• You’ll collaborate with teams across the business to build real value and shape the future of the company - think product launches, partner integrations, and platform-wide improvements.
• You’ll play a key role in the delivery of our cross-functional projects; ensuring they run smoothly, and that we are consistently getting better at the way we deliver them.
• You will make the case for prioritising work in the areas that you own and for making amendments to our strategy where you think appropriate, working with stakeholders across the business to ensure you can have maximum impact.
• You will be responsible for managing multiple direct reports and will play an increasingly large role in mentoring newer managers as they make the transition into line management.
• Of course, as a startup we’ll also expect you to roll your sleeves up and get involved wherever the company needs you.

• At least 4 years of professional experience working as a software engineer with at least 2 years of leadership and management experience.
• You’re fluent in and opinionated on one or more of:
  • Front-End Java script frameworks (we work with Angular)
  • Python
• You’ve got experience with (or are at least excited to learn more about!):
  • Front-End/UX design and prototyping
  • Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Rabbit
    
    MQ, AWS, SQL
• You’ll be confident using your technical expertise to influence key decisions about how we design, build, and grow our products and systems.
• You’re comfortable working through ambiguous problems with a high degree of autonomy.
• You treat everyone with integrity, respect and kindness - whether it’s your colleagues, our customers, or our partners.

These requirements are a guide as to what we’re looking for, but if you don’t have all of the skills listed above, that’s okay! Please don’t let that hold you back from applying if the role excites you.