Director of Engineering

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: London

Reporting To: Shahid Naveed

Compensation: £150,000 / year

Description

Director of Engineering
London

Freetrade’s mission is to become the default place to invest. Investing has been too complicated and expensive for too long, keeping millions from making the most of their savings.

We’re changing that.

We’re building our team and looking for people who are excited to reshape how our customers invest and grow their wealth. If you’re driven by solving complex problems and building innovative products, you’ll fit right in.

2025 is a big year for us. In January, we announced a game changing deal to become part of the IG Group. We’ll continue to operate as an independent business while gaining access to the resources and support of an established leader in the space.

This year, we’re accelerating our roadmap and taking our products to the next level. We’re building new features like mutual funds, bonds, and family investment tools. We’re also exploring how we can leverage AI to deliver an even better experience for our customers.

Freetrade is looking for a Director of Engineering to lead and scale its engineering function, ensuring high standards, strong execution, and a culture of continuous improvement. This role will be responsible for working closely with the CTO to execute the company strategy, keeping engineering managers accountable, and building an engineering culture that frames challenges as opportunities with a solutions first mindset.

The ideal candidate will come from a fast paced, high stakes environment (ideally fintech) and be able to set and maintain high engineering standards, balancing innovation with compliance. They will also play a key role in optimising engineering velocity, removing bottlenecks, and ensuring Freetrade attracts, develops, and retains top engineering talent.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

Work closely with the CTO to execute the company strategy by leading the engineering function.
Set and lead high engineering standards, ensuring all teams are aligned without introducing process heavy methods.
Keep engineering managers accountable and support their development to achieve engineering excellence.
Create an engineering culture where problems are framed as challenges, with a solutions first approach to product development.

Driving Engineering Velocity

Own and optimise engineering velocity, ensuring teams move fast while maintaining quality.
Balance the natural tension between innovation and compliance well, ensuring we maintain market competitiveness by doing right by our customers.
Implement effective processes without process bloat, enabling teams to execute efficiently without unnecessary friction.
Continuously identify and remove bottlenecks to keep teams operating at peak performance.

Talent Acquisition & Engineering Growth

Strengthen hiring efforts, defining hiring profiles and personally interviewing senior candidates while also structuring a scalable recruitment pipeline.
Develop career ladders and retention strategies to attract, retain, and grow top engineering talent.
Mentor and develop engineering managers and senior engineers, ensuring they become high impact leaders.
Shape Freetrade’s engineering brand to attract top talent through public presence, tech talks, and community engagement.

Data Driven Culture & Engineering Metrics

Define and implement engineering productivity metrics, tracking delivery velocity, change failure rate, cycle time, and other key indicators.
Ensure clear visibility into engineering performance, using dashboards and reporting to identify bottlenecks and improvement areas.
Use objective data to drive continuous improvement, ensuring teams refine workflows and enhance engineering efficiency.

About You

✔ Technical but not hands on – able to challenge designs, execution quality, and trade offs while leaving implementation to teams.
✔ A leadership style that’s focused on building capability through proactive coaching, feedback and mentoring.
✔ Solutions driven mindset.
✔ Dynamic approach to setting and maintaining high standards and execution.
✔ Confident with high stakes decision making and evolving priorities. Able to shift gears seamlessly and communicate changes positively and effectively across their department.
✔ Exceptional talent builder – improves hiring, career progression and retention of top engineering talent.
✔ Drives a data driven engineering culture – defines and tracks key engineering KPIs to optimise productivity and delivery.

Benefits

Freetrade is the place to accelerate your career. Our benefits package and ways of working are designed to attract and retain the most talented people who are dedicated to making an impact at Freetrade.

Here’s what’s on offer in 2025:

Office first culture - we have beautiful office spaces in central London and Budapest where 4 days a week you collaborate with colleagues in person, one of our core behaviours is that we’re a team that works better together.

Values - at Freetrade we live and breathe our values, Honesty, Focus and Grit. Expect to be asked about these in your interview!

Benefits In London:

Competitive salary – carefully benchmarked.
Holidays – 25 days plus UK public holidays. Your birthday off, plus one extra day for every year at Freetrade.
Enhanced pension – We’ll match your contributions up to 5%.
Group Life Insurance – Protect your loved ones with coverage at 5x your salary, ensuring financial security in any circumstance.
Private Health Insurance - Which includes access to high quality medical care, mental health support, dental and vision plans, Wellness programs and preventative care initiatives are also provided to ensure the wellbeing of your entire family.
Income Protection Cover – Safeguard your income with comprehensive coverage, ensuring financial stability in the event of illness or injury.
Enhanced parental leave – Time off when it matters most.
Flexibility for those who need it – We’re office-first, but life happens. Whether you’re a parent or have care responsibilities, we focus on output and trust you to manage your time.
Learning & Development – We fund industry qualifications so you can grow as a financial services professional.
Cycle to Work scheme – Get a high quality bike and gear through our salary sacrifice scheme, spreading the cost with tax free monthly instalments.
Paid Sick Leave – Receive 10 days of fully paid sick leave each calendar year.

We are an Equal Opportunity employer committed to a diverse and representative team. Whatever your race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability - we want to hear from you. We're very open about what we're working on, and the best places to learn more are our buzzing community forum and our blog.

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Please note we are not accepting agency CVs.

Talent Screening

Hiring Manager Interview

Values Interview

Hired