Staff Software Engineer - Back End
Job description
Original text imported from Reed
About this role
Do you love shaping the technical landscape and driving innovation across the organisation?
Are you passionate about solving complex business problems and supporting multiple teams toward a shared technical vision?
At Capital One, you'll be part of a community of technical leaders who drive engineering excellence, foster innovation, and deliver impactful solutions that meet real customer needs.
What You'll Do
- Own and drive the technical strategy for a significant business outcome or technology domain, spanning multiple teams and influencing the overall technical direction
- Lead and coordinate the efforts of multiple teams, ensuring their collective work aligns with broader business objectives and technology strategy
- Proactively identify emerging patterns, define and evangelise best practices, and establish reusable frameworks that enhance engineering productivity
- Build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders, including senior leadership, product owners, and architects
- Represent Capital One in external technical forums, contributing to vendor/industry discussions
- Drive service quality standards and practices for your domain, guiding complex incident resolution
- Develop and advocate for strategies to proactively manage technical debt across multiple teams
- Actively mentor and develop engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning
What we’re looking for
- Deep expertise in Java
- Deep expertise in system design and distributed architectures
- Track record of leading technical initiatives across multiple teams
- Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Proven experience setting a multi-team technical vision and strategy
- Strong track record of technical leadership and influence without authority
- Experience driving engineering standards and best practices across organisations
- Experience of steering Communities of Practice or technical forums
- Strong business acumen and ability to translate technical concepts for various audiences
Where and how you'll work
This is a permanent position based in our London office.
We have a hybrid working model which gives you flexibility to work from our office and from home.
We’re big on collaboration and connection, so you’ll be based in our London office 3 days a week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
What’s in it for you
- Bring us all this - and you’ll be well rewarded with a role contributing to the roadmap of an organisation committed to transformation
- We offer high performers strong and diverse career progression, investing heavily in developing great people through our Capital One University training programmes (and appropriate external providers)
- Immediate access to our core benefits including pension scheme, bonus, generous holiday entitlement and private medical insurance – with flexible benefits available including season-ticket loans, cycle to work scheme and enhanced parental leave
- Open-plan workspaces and accessible facilities designed to inspire and support you. Our Nottingham head-office has a fully-serviced gym, subsidised restaurant, mindfulness and music rooms. In London, you can heighten your mood with a run on our rooftop running track or an espresso at the Workshop Coffee café
What you should know about how we recruit
We pride ourselves on hiring the best people, not the same people. Building diverse and inclusive teams is the right thing to do and the smart thing to do. We want to work with top talent: whoever you are, whatever you look like, wherever you come from. We know it’s about what you do, not just what you say. That’s why we make our recruitment process fair and accessible. And we offer benefits that attract people at all ages and stages.
We also partner with organisations including the Women in Finance and Race At Work Charters, Stonewall and upReach to find people from every walk of life and help them thrive with us. We have a whole host of internal networks and support groups you could be involved in, to name a few:
- REACH – Race Equality and Culture Heritage group focuses on representation, retention and engagement for associates from minority ethnic groups and allies
- OutFront – to provide LGBTQ+ support for all associates
- Mind Your Mind – signposting support and promoting positive mental wellbeing for all
- Women in Tech – promoting an inclusive environment in tech
- EmpowHER - network of female associates and allies focusing on developing future leaders, particularly for female talent in our industry
- Enabled - focused on supporting associates with disabilities and neurodiversity
If you require a reasonable adjustment, please contact All information will be kept confidential and will only be used for the purpose of applying a reasonable adjustment.
For technical support or questions about Capital One's recruiting process, please send an email to
Capital One does not provide, endorse nor guarantee and is not liable for third-party products, services, educational tools or other information available through this site.
Capital One Financial is made up of several different entities. Please note that any position posted in Canada is for Capital One Canada, any position posted in the United Kingdom is for Capital One Europe and any position posted in the Philippines is for Capital One Philippines Service Corp. (COPSSC).
Who We Are
At Capital One, we're building a leading information-based technology company. Still founder-led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Richard Fairbank, Capital One is on a mission to help our customers succeed by bringing ingenuity, simplicity, and humanity to b
Key skills
AI-extracted from the job advert
Application advice
5 AI-generated recommendations to maximise your chances.
⭐ Highlight your Java expertise and system design experience prominently as these are the core technical requirements
📊 Quantify your multi-team leadership impact: 'Led technical strategy across 8 teams, reducing deployment time by 45%'
🌐 Emphasise your cloud platform experience with specific AWS/Azure/GCP projects and outcomes
🎯 Showcase examples of technical vision setting and cross-organisational influence without direct authority
🤝 Detail your experience with Communities of Practice or technical forums, including membership numbers and initiatives led
Suggested CV bullets
3 bullets our AI drafted for this specific advert, mirroring its ATS keywords.
Add these 3 bullets under your most recent experience:
- •Led technical strategy across 12 engineering teams, implementing Java-based microservices architecture that reduced system latency by 35% and improved deployment frequency to 4x per week
- •Established engineering standards and Communities of Practice for 80+ developers, resulting in 50% reduction in critical incidents and standardised AWS deployment patterns across 6 business domains
- •Mentored 15 senior engineers while driving technical debt reduction initiatives, achieving 40% decrease in legacy code dependencies and £2.1M in infrastructure cost savings
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Letter preview — tailored to Capital One
Dear Hiring Manager,
Capital One's commitment to technical excellence and innovation makes this Staff Software Engineer position particularly compelling. My extensive Java expertise and proven track record in system design for distributed architectures align perfectly with your requirements for driving technical strategy across multiple teams.
My background in leading cross-functional engineering initiatives and establishing technical standards across organisations has prepared me to tackle the complex challenges of coordinating multiple teams toward shared technical visions. I have successfully mentored engineering teams while managing technical debt and driving service quality improvements in cloud-native environments.
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Interview questions
10 questions generated from this advert.
Technical
- ›How would you design a distributed system to handle millions of transactions per day?
- ›Explain your approach to managing technical debt across multiple teams with different priorities
- ›Describe how you would architect a microservices solution using Java and cloud platforms
- ›How do you ensure service quality and reliability in a multi-team environment?
- ›What strategies would you use to establish engineering standards across different teams?
Behavioural
- ›Tell me about a time you influenced technical direction without having direct authority over the teams
- ›Describe a situation where you had to coordinate multiple teams toward a shared technical vision
- ›Give an example of how you've mentored engineers and fostered continuous learning
- ›Tell me about a complex technical problem you solved that had significant business impact
- ›Describe how you've represented your organisation in external technical forums or discussions
STAR answer examples
Model answers using the Situation-Task-Action-Result framework. Adapt to your own experience.
Tell me about a time you influenced technical direction without having direct authority over the teams
Describe a situation where you had to coordinate multiple teams toward a shared technical vision