Marketing and Partnerships Director - 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.

We have a hybrid approach to working at Engine - our preference is that you’re located within a commutable distance of London (Liverpool Street) to enable in-person collaboration and interaction with your team.

About the Role

Engine by Starling, the complete, cloud-native banking platform developed and proven by Starling Bank in the UK, is seeking an experienced Marketing and Partnerships Director to lead our global marketing function as we enter our next phase of growth. You will be the architect of Engine's global positioning and reputation, translating our best-in-class digital banking blueprint into a compelling proposition for financial institutions around the world. 

Reporting into the executive team, you will own the global marketing strategy across brand, digital, communications and demand-driving activity. You will lead a central marketing strategy and operations team and design/content studio while building and overseeing regional marketing capability in priority markets including the US, Europe, Middle East and ANZ.

This is a high-impact role for a senior marketing leader who thrives in fast-moving, scaling environments and can operate seamlessly across brand building, digital channels, communications, marketing and events and close collaboration with commercial and sales leadership.

Global Marketing Strategy and Leadership

• Develop and execute a clear global marketing strategy aligned to Engine’s commercial goals and long-term growth ambitions. 
• Evolve Engine’s positioning, mission and purpose , ensuring we are the undisputed first choice for transformation programmes.
• Lead and develop a high-performing central marketing team covering marketing operations, brand, digital, content and design.
• Build and scale regional marketing teams in priority markets, ensuring consistency of brand and messaging while enabling local market impact.

Strategic Partnerships & Co-Marketing

• Ecosystem Marketing: Develop and execute joint marketing strategies with global system integrators (GSIs), technology alliance partners, and consultancy firms to drive indirect pipeline.
• Partner Enablement: Create comprehensive marketing toolkits, collateral, and joint value propositions to enable partners to effectively pitch Engine by Starling to their financial institution clients.
• Joint Demand Generation: Architect and execute co-funded account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns and bespoke roundtables alongside strategic partners targeting Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks.

Brand, Positioning and Communications

• Own Engine’s brand strategy, ensuring a strong, differentiated position in the core banking SaaS market. Maintain standards of excellence and ensure the Engine brand commands respect from C-suite stakeholders at banks.
• Ensure effective corporate communications, PR and thought leadership activity, working closely with the Starling Group Corporate Affairs team and external agencies as needed.
• Act as a senior brand guardian, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints and channels.

Digital, Demand and Growth

• Oversee the digital ecosystem from the website and targeted and high-intent SEO, to social through LinkedIn and flagship events measuring all activity for efficiency and effectiveness.
• Partner closely with commercial and sales leadership to support pipeline generation, build account based marketing (ABM) campaigns targeting the right financial institutions.
• Develop engagement with analysts to position Engine as a trusted technology leader 
• Use data and insight to continuously optimise performance, and engagement. Track results and provide leadership with clear ROI.

Collaboration and Influence

• Work closely with Product, Sales, Commercial and Executive teams to ensure marketing supports product strategy and go-to-market priorities.
• Serve as a senior marketing voice internally, influencing decision-making and representing marketing at executive level.
• Manage external partners and agencies to deliver high-quality, scalable output.

Requirements

• 10+ years’ experience in senior marketing roles, ideally within B2B SaaS, core banking, digital banking or fintech environments.
• Strong background across marketing, events and partnerships with the ability to balance brand and performance.
• Proven track record of building and executing partner marketing programs with GSIs, consulting firms, or major cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).
• Proven experience leading and scaling teams in fast-growth, international businesses.
• Demonstrated success building and managing global marketing strategies across multiple regions.
• Deep understanding of digital marketing channels and modern marketing operations.
• Commercially astute, with a track record of close collaboration with sales and revenue teams.
• Confident leader with excellent stakeholder management, communication and storytelling skills.

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:

• Initial video interview with Engine’s Chief Commercial Officer (45 minutes)
• A secondary, deeper interview, members of the Starling Marketing team including CMO (60 minutes)
• Final interview with Engine’s CEO (45 minutes)

Benefits

• 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. 

By submitting your application, you agree that Starling may collect your personal data for recruiting and related purposes. Our Privacy Notice explains what personal information we may process, where we may process your personal information, its purposes for processing your personal information, and the rights you can exercise over our use of your personal information.