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: • Configure First: Solve requests using existing product configuration surfaces to deliver fast, maintainable solutions. • Integrate at the Edge: Build robust integration layers against clean, stable A