Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Our Mission

At Ophelos, we believe in a different way to deal with debt. One that puts empathy and understanding front and centre, approaching our customers as individuals — no matter what they’re going through.

For too long, people in debt have borne the brunt of poor industry practices. Intimidating tactics, time-consuming customer service and a one-size-fits-all approach that overlooks the reasons anyone can fall into debt in the first place. Meanwhile, businesses suffer too. Poor customer experience translates to poor customer satisfaction, high churn rates, bad brand reputation and ultimately missed opportunities.

That’s why we’re taking a radically different approach. Pioneering an industry-first AI-native collections platform, we build products that help individuals clear their debts in a way that suits them, whilst providing businesses with an improved customer experience and game-changing insights into their customer base.

Since our launch in 2021, we’ve worked with some of the UK’s leading companies, including Octopus, Scottish Power and Philips — helping millions of people move toward a more stable, debt-free future. In 2023, we were acquired by Intrum, Europe’s biggest credit management service and have begun the next phase in our growth — expansion into 17 European markets over the next two years.

About Ophelos

At Ophelos, we are reimagining credit, collections, and financial health infrastructure across Europe. Our mission is to build fairer, smarter, and more empathetic financial systems through modern software engineering, data science, and thoughtful product design.

As we expand into new markets across Europe, we face a core challenge: adapting to complex local banking standards, regulatory requirements, payment systems, and client integrations while maintaining a clean, scalable core platform. That’s where Forward Deployed Engineering comes in.

The Role

Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) make Ophelos work in each market without changing what Ophelos fundamentally is. FDEs operate right at the intersection of high-calibre software engineering and real-world market expansion.

 

In this role, you will hold a unique position across Engineering and Markets:

 

• Engineering owns your growth & craft: You are held to rigorous engineering standards—code reviews, architecture design, technical excellence, line management, progression, and pay.
• Markets owns the priorities: You work hand-in-hand with named Markets counterparts to prioritize client deployments, integrations, and go-live schedules.

What You'll Do

• Edge & Integration Engineering: Build, scale, and optimize per-market client data ingestion and egestion integrations, including APIs, file formats, validation, reconciliation, and replay mechanisms.
• Payment & Comms Integration: Connect market-specific payment providers, SMS, email, postal, and messaging vendor APIs through clean platform abstractions.
• Configuration & Localisation: Leverage and expand existing configuration surfaces to adapt Ophelos to local regulations and workflow needs.
• Market Operations & Defects: Own and resolve market-specific defects within the integration and configuration layers.
• Field-to-Roadmap Influence: Collect market needs, measure commercial impact, and author structured Product Cases stating unlock value to shape the core product roadmap.
• Client & Partner Engagement: Partner directly with Markets Success and client technical teams during onboarding across Europe.

Our Operating Principles

We solve complex market expansion through structured decision-making:

1. Configure First: Solve requests using existing product configuration surfaces to deliver fast, maintainable solutions.
2. Integrate at the Edge: Build robust integration layers against clean, stable Abstraction APIs.
3. Escalate with Impact: When core capabilities are missing, build compelling business cases to drive product platform development rather than modifying core code directly.

Role Expectations & Responsibilities

• Owns complete market onboarding end-to-end, acting as the primary technical authority in client discussions.
• Aggregates multi-market needs into the Abstraction API roadmap with product engineering.
• Builds reusable integration patterns, market playbooks, and mentors mid-level FDEs.
• Confidently leads technical and executive-level discussions with enterprise financial institutions.

What We’re Looking For

Core Technical Requirements

• Strong Software Engineering Skills: Production proficiency in Python and TypeScript, with Ruby experience considered a plus.
• Data Fluency Under Failure: Hands-on experience with complex schemas, data transformation, validation, reconciliation, idempotency, and replay logic.
• Third-Party Integration Experience: Demonstrated ability to evaluate, map, and integrate third-party APIs and protocols safely and reliably.
• Cross-Functional Communication: Ability to translate technical details clearly to client executives, product managers, and software engineers alike.
• Documentation & AI-First Mindset: Habitual documentation practices and comfort working in an AI-first development environment using tools like Claude Code, Codex, and OpenSpec.
• Location & Travel: Willingness to work 3 days a week from our London office in Liverpool Street and travel periodically across Europe.

Senior Experience & Domain Expertise

• Regulated Domain Experience: Background in collections, credit, payments, fintech, or adjacent regulated sectors.
• Enterprise Onboarding: Track record of navigating complex client data models and multi-stakeholder corporate integrations.
• Roadmap Influence: Demonstrated experience building business cases that successfully influenced core product roadmaps.

Why Join Us?

• High Impact: Directly shape how Ophelos scales into new European markets.
• Technical Rigour: Work with high engineering standards without sacrificing market agility.
• Career Growth: Clear progression framework within a rapidly expanding company.
• Modern Stack & Workflows: AI-first engineering practices and modern tools.

Ophelos is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

About Our Team

Ophelos launched in June of 2021, backed by investors such as AlbionVC, Connect Ventures and Fly Ventures. In 2023, we were acquired by Intrum, Europe’s biggest credit management service. Our growing team has team helped build some of the world’s most successful businesses, including the likes of Monzo, Google, Oracle, ASAPP, IBM and more — in addition to pioneering innovative products, sitting at the intersection of enterprise, financial technology, artificial intelligence and academia, working with institutions such as Oxford University, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Hong Kong.

Our Values

Supporting customers and businesses to improve their financial health is a long-term mission. Our company values act as our north star, steering our every move as an organisation and are the backbone of our unique company culture. Our values and culture allow us to stay true to our larger purpose, even as we continue to grow at a rapid pace.

Customers and Clients first – We exist to help real people move through debt and to get clients paid back. This commitment drives how we design products, deliver services, and interact with customers and clients daily.

Dream big – We have ambition and drive to succeed - we’re not just raising the bar, we’re confidently asserting ourselves as the benchmark.

Get it done – We’re decisive and embrace a sense of urgency; we don’t let opportunities get away from us. We’d rather act quickly and take informed risks, iterating and learning as we go. 

Win as one - We work as one team, supporting each other and aiming for shared goals. At Ophelos, the team isn’t just individual departments - it’s all of us together.  We challenge and support each other because we care about everyone’s growth and success. 

Ophelos is committed to creating a diverse work environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace, providing equal employment and advancement opportunities to all team members. We are building an environment where every Ophelos team member can thrive, feel a sense of belonging, and do the best work of their careers. We value diversity and recruit, hire, and promote individuals solely based on talent, qualifications, competence, and merit. We evaluate candidates without regard to race, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or other protected characteristics as required by law and as a matter of our company values.

GDPR Notice 

When you apply to a job on this site, the personal data contained in your application will be collected by Ophelos ("Controller"), located at 1 Finsbury Ave, London EC2M 2PF, and can be contacted by emailing support@ophelos.com. Controller's data protection contact is Kofi Barnes, who can be contacted at support@ophelos.com.

This notice explains how we process your personal data throughout our recruitment process, including at the interview stage described below. Applying for a role with Ophelos is subject to the practices described in this notice — it is not a separate agreement you sign, but a description of how the recruitment process works. You won't be given a separate notice at each stage; Ophelos retains discretion over which of the described tools and processes are applied to any given application or interview, within the purposes set out below. This discretion does not extend to introducing automated decision-making without human review — that is addressed separately below.

What we use your data for

Your personal data will be processed for the purposes of managing Controller's recruitment-related activities, which include reviewing applications, setting up and conducting interviews and tests, evaluating and assessing the results, and as is otherwise needed in the recruitment and hiring process.

As part of this process, we use software tools — including AI-assisted tools — to help us organise, screen, and evaluate applications and interviews. This includes:

• Automated analysis of CVs and application materials to identify relevant skills and experience
• Automated analysis of interview transcripts to help summarise and score responses (see "Interviews" below)
• Generating scores, summaries, or insights to assist our recruiters

Currently, these AI-assisted outputs are advisory only. A human recruiter reviews every application and every AI-generated score or summary before any decision is made, and no application is filtered out or rejected by an automated process alone.

We may in future use automated tools to make, or take part in making, decisions about your application without human review at that stage, if we do so in a way that complies with applicable law at the time — for example, by obtaining your explicit consent, or where the decision is necessary for entering into a contract with you, and in either case only with appropriate safeguards, including your ability to request human review of, and to contest, that decision. If we intend to introduce this, we will update this notice and separately inform you before it applies to your application — this notice alone does not authorise it.

We also use historical, aggregated recruitment data to improve our processes generally — for example, to better understand which factors tend to be associated with successful hires. Where this involves data from past applicants, it is anonymised or aggregated before use, and is not used to make any decision about a specific individual.

Such processing is legally permissible under Art. 6(1)(f) UK/EU GDPR as necessary for the legitimate interests pursued by the Controller: the solicitation, evaluation, and selection of applicants for employment, and the improvement of Controller's recruitment processes.

Interviews — recording and transcription

If you're invited to an interview conducted by video or phone call, it will be recorded and automatically transcribed as a standard part of our recruitment process — this is described in this notice, which applies to your application as explained above. Where an interview is recorded:

• The interview will be recorded and transcribed using our video-calling provider (Google Meet).
• The transcript will be processed by AI tools (including models provided by Anthropic and Google) to help generate a summary and structured notes for the interview panel, and to help train and improve our own recruitment tools as described above.
• The recording, transcript, and any AI-generated summary will be stored on Ophelos's systems (hosted via Cloudflare) and in Greenhouse.
• A human interviewer/panel always reviews the AI-generated summary as part of forming their own assessment — it is a starting point for the panel, not a decision in itself.

Recording and transcribing interviews in this way is necessary for us to evaluate all candidates fairly and consistently, and is carried out under our legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) in running a fair, well-documented recruitment process.

Who we share your data with

Your personal data will be shared with the following processors, engaged by Controller to help manage its recruitment and hiring process:

• Greenhouse Software, Inc. — applicant tracking system (United States)
• Google LLC — video interview hosting/recording (Google Meet), and AI models used to help analyse application and interview materials (United States)
• Anthropic, PBC — AI models used to help analyse and summarise application and interview materials (United States)
• Cloudflare, Inc. — infrastructure and data storage supporting our recruitment tools [confirm storage region before publishing]

We use application and interview data, including through AI-assisted tools, to train and improve our own internal recruitment tools and models — for example, to refine how we identify relevant skills and experience, and to better understand what tends to be associated with successful hires. This is part of how we evaluate and improve our recruitment process on an ongoing basis.

The third-party AI providers who process this data on our behalf do not use it to train their own general-purpose AI models — it is used only to generate the specific outputs described in this notice.

International data transfers

Because the above providers are located in or transfer data to the United States, if you are located outside the United States, your personal data will be transferred to the United States once you submit it or once your interview is processed. Where the European Commission has not made an adequacy determination covering such a transfer, it is subject to appropriate safeguards, including Standard Contractual Clauses and/or the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework where the recipient is certified. You can obtain a copy of the relevant safeguards by contacting support@ophelos.com.

How long we keep your data

Your personal data, including any interview recordings, transcripts, and AI-generated summaries, will be retained for the duration of the recruitment process and for 24 months afterwards, to allow us to consider you for other roles and manage any related legal claims, after which it will be deleted or anonymised. You can request earlier deletion at any time by contacting support@ophelos.com.

Your rights

Under the GDPR, you have the right to request access to your personal data, to request that it be rectified or erased, and to request that processing be restricted. You also have the right to data portability and the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests, including interview recording — though for the reasons explained above, we may not be able to progress an application where a candidate objects to standard recording of the interview stage. In addition, you may lodge a complaint with an EU or UK supervisory authority (in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office).