Business Development Consultant - Central Eastern Europe - Engine by Starling

Dubizzle Limited; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - GBP 70,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial services firm is seeking a Business Development Consultant to enhance client relationships across Central Eastern Europe. This dynamic role involves driving early-stage conversations, managing workshops, and collaborating with product teams for impactful outcomes. The ideal candidate thrives in a hybrid working environment, demonstrates fluency in relevant languages, and possesses strong analytical and communication skills. Competitive benefits include generous holidays and comprehensive health coverage.

Benefits

33 days holiday

Annual leave increases with service

16 hours paid volunteering time

Private Medical Insurance

Salary sacrifice pension scheme

Discounts through Perkbox

Qualifications

• 3+ years experience in consulting with banks in Central Eastern Europe.
• Understanding of bank IT systems and change management.

Responsibilities

• Support client workshops and demos, identify opportunities in Central Eastern Europe.
• Foster relationships with implementation partners.
• Project manage opportunities across various domains.

Skills

Fluent in German or Italian and/or CEE languages

Proactive and learning-oriented

Strong presentation and communication skills

Attention to detail

Job description

Overview

At 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.

Travel (including international) will likely be necessary on an ad hoc basis, depending on the client and nature of the engagement.

About the Role

The role offers the opportunity to meet with a wide range of potential clients, listen to their needs and explore how Engine can offer a solution for growth and transformation. Working closely with Client Engineering and Product teams, you will help to create, shape and develop trusted and long-term relationships for Engine - alongside our consulting and implementation partners - who we collaborate with frequently.

We’re looking for a versatile and creative individual to undertake this role, who enjoys the challenge of a varied and collaborative position, and can offer first-hand experience in Central Eastern European markets. Our BD Consultants enjoy problem solving, getting to the detail without losing sight of the big picture, and making a tangible impact on how banks can launch successful and innovative propositions.

What you'll get to do

• Supporting early stage conversations, running client workshops and demos, whilst identifying opportunities across Central Eastern Europe
• Contributing to marketing activities and conferences, elevating the awareness and understanding of Engine’s brand and market positioning, ensuring we build a reputation based on trust and excellence
• Fostering and maintaining strong relationships with our implementation partners, driving collaborative business development activities and go-to-market strategies
• Co-ordinating platform requirements for the European market into the product roadmap
• Taking ownership of selected strategic opportunities, where we encourage you to try something new or hone your existing skillset
• Acting as the advocate and voice of the client throughout the relationship, offering transparency and building trust, with the ability to distil and understand their strategic vision and needs
• Project managing opportunities, bringing different domains of the business together to offer subject matter expertise and specialist insight about Engine’s solution
• Managing commercial and contractual conversations
• Working with our Client Solutions teams through Discovery and Delivery phases, providing relationship-based and commercial support
• Problem solving: conducting structured analysis and presentations to evidence how - and why - Engine can address the issues banks are facing today

Future development

We want to develop future leaders by giving people the opportunity to move between teams and build experience in a variety of roles, in Business Development, Product Management, Delivery and Engineering. At the same time, we are expanding internationally and establishing regional offices in key markets around the world. We expect that, after an initial period in Business Development, you will have the option (but not the obligation) to move to a new role, either in a different function, or in a different part of the world.

• You have worked for 3+ years in a reputable consulting organisation, where you gained experience and exposure across a number of banks and situations in Central Eastern Europe, and now want to apply your advisory skills into practice
• You have experience of the financial services industry (ideally retail or business banking) and an understanding of the challenges relating to bank IT systems and change management

Your skills

• You possess native or fluent German, Italian and/or CEE language skills (additional European languages being also a plus)
• You are highly proactive, and an avid learner - rapidly assimilating technical concepts alongside a variety of client issues, needs and concerns
• You have the confidence to ask insightful questions and engage in conversation with senior bank executives
• You embrace autonomy in a highly collaborative team with a flat structure
• You have strong presentation, facilitation and communication skills
• You possess strong attention to detail, without sacrificing the wider picture - articulating a value proposition through its constituent parts
• You can adapt your communication style to different stakeholders (senior clients, consulting organisations and engineering functions, for example)

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 a member of the Business Development team (45 minutes)
• A secondary, deeper interview, with additional members of the team - including our Regional Director for Europe. This is preferably hosted in our London office, and may include the opportunity to present to a portion of the team (60 minutes)
• Final interview with Engine’s Chief Commercial Officer (45 minutes)

• 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.