---
title: 'Forward Deployed Engineer - Infrastructure at Thought Machine'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-infrastructure-thought-machine-london-nzzmvkv4r7nh'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-21'
---

# Forward Deployed Engineer - Infrastructure at Thought Machine

- **Company:** Thought Machine
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-17
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-21
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/thought-machine/92f38da6-3192-4cef-b88c-f05e9dcd752d

## Job description

Thought Machine's mission is bold – to properly and permanently rid the world's banks of legacy technology. To achieve this, we have developed the foundations of modern banking through core and payments technology which run natively in the cloud. What we are attempting is hard and means we need great people working together to build great technology.

We have grown rapidly in the past few years – growing our team to more than 550 individuals across offices in London, New York, Singapore, Sydney and our newly established Engineering Hub in Lisbon. We have raised more than £500m in funding and our investors include Molten Ventures, Eurazeo, Intesa Sanpaolo, Temasek, Nyca Partners, JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments, Standard Chartered Ventures, and more.

We have created a culture that enables our team to produce the best work in the industry while ensuring we have fun along the way. We're regularly cited as having a fantastic workplace culture and have been recognised by Sifted magazine as having one of the highest Glassdoor ratings for a UK fintech company and the industry's most generous employee share package. Named one of the world's most innovative fintechs by Global Finance Magazine, we were also recognised by the Financial Times as one of Europe's fastest-growing companies for two consecutive years—and a UK Best Employer for 2026.

The Forward Deployed Engineer is Thought Machine's primary technical interface with the client as an extension to the product. FDEs embed directly with the client’s engineering teams to design, build, and deliver production-ready implementations of Vault and associated products.

You will be responsible for enabling and supporting our clients to deliver a best in class cloud native implementation of Thought Machine Vault products on client or Thought Machine hosted infrastructure, from presales to production at scale. You will be expected to work on Vault deployments end-to-end, from engineering at the business logic to supporting clients in their cloud infrastructure preparation, deployment, optimisation and troubleshooting.

For this role, we are looking for candidates with tangible infrastructure experience to work with clients on their infrastructure deployments and to act as an extension of our internal SRE teams.

FDEs operate across the full project lifecycle ensuring requirements are implemented, tested and work to improve the product based on client feedback. You will be expected to travel to client sites (up to 25% of your time), work autonomously in complex environments, and act as the connective tissue between Thought Machine's product engineering and the client's delivery teams.

Duties

- Hands on cloud infrastructure consulting both on client site and remote
- Working with customers and external partners to design and prepare suitable cloud infrastructure to ensure Thought Machine Vault products can be tested and run successfully at scale. Includes planning for high availability, disaster recovery, backup, redundancy, capacity and security.
- Deploying and configuring Thought Machine Vault products on client, SaaS and internal cloud infrastructure
- Developing deep understanding of and advising clients on optimisation of cloud infrastructure for overarching implementation of Vault, including advising on systems outside of Vault to empower holistic digital transformation in collaboration with Thought Machine Client Architects
- Supporting and troubleshooting client, SaaS and internal cloud infrastructure both remotely and on site, including by promoting and deploying suitable monitoring, logging and alerting tools
- Working closely with internal product and engineering teams to ensure client feedback is incorporated into improvements to the product and platform
- Supporting the Thought Machine Commercial Team and Cloud Provider Partners in answering infrastructure queries and challenges in the presales cycle

## Requirements

Essential

- Ability to explain technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Hands on experience of some or all of the following:
- Linux/Unix administration, e.g. Ubuntu, Debian
- Kafka
- PostgreSQL
- Kubernetes
- Istio
- Experience with automation/configuration management, e.g. Terraform, Puppet, Chef, Ansible
- Experience with AWS or GCP

Desirable

- Experience with at least two and associated certifications for at least one of the following:
- AWS (ideally certified Solutions Architect Professional)
- GCP (ideally certified Professional Cloud Architect)
- Azure (ideally certified Solutions Architect Expert)
- Experience of enterprise secrets management systems, e.g. HashiCorp Vault, AWS secrets manager
- Experience in supporting production systems for high profile, mission critical systems, ideally for a tier 1 financial institution.
- Experience with hybrid cloud technologies including OpenShift, Google Anthos, AWS EKS Anywhere, AWS Outposts
- A strong background in Go, Python or Java
- Experience with CockroachDB, AlloyDB, Aurora
- Experience with observability tools, e.g. Prometheus, Grafana

## Benefits

- Highly competitive salary
- Pension plan (match up to 5%)
- Life insurance - three times annual salary
- Competitive maternity (six months fully paid) and paternity leave (four weeks fully paid)
- Shared parental leave (matched to our maternity leave for the same point in time)
- 25 days holiday and bank holidays
- Flexible working hours
- Cycle-to-work scheme
- Electric car scheme
- Season ticket loan
- Access to outstanding learning materials and courses
- Sports and hobby clubs, subsidised by Thought Machine
- All the latest tech you need
- Start the day properly with fresh fruit and cereals
- Huge range of healthy (and not-so-healthy) snacks, smoothies and drinks
- A talented and experienced team as your colleagues
- An environment where we encourage learning and progress
- Two charity days a year
- Weekly food pop-up

We actively hire candidates who demonstrate technical excellence in their field and welcome people of all ages and backgrounds, providing everyone with equal access to professional development. You are encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't accurately match the job description. We also encourage applications from those with different abilities, including candidates with ADHD, autism, dyslexia or dyspraxia.

## About Thought Machine

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Thought Machine provides cloud-native core banking and payments platforms that enable banks to build and run any financial product without legacy constraints.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series D, valuation $2.7bn as of 2023)
- **Headquarters**: London, United Kingdom
- **Founded**: 2014
- **Founders**: Paul Taylor

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Core banking technology / Fintech infrastructure
- **Target customers**: Tier 1 multinational banks, regional banks, digital banks, and fintechs (B2B, enterprise)
- **Mission or purpose**: To create technology that can run the world’s banks according to the best designs and software practices of the modern age, permanently ridding banks of legacy infrastructure problems.

## Products & Services
- **[Vault Core](https://www.thoughtmachine.net/)**: Cloud-native core banking engine built from scratch, using microservices architecture and smart contracts. Supports current/savings accounts, credit cards, loans, mortgages, and custom products. Includes a Product Library of 200+ preconfigured financial products. (Type: SaaS / platform)
- **[Vault Payments](https://www.thoughtmachine.net/)**: Cloud-native payments processing platform for all payment types, schemes, and regions. Launched with card issuing and processing on the Mastercard network. (Type: SaaS / platform)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $2.7bn (after $160m Series D in 2023, per [thoughtmachine.net/about-us](https://www.thoughtmachine.net/about-us))
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – $510m across Series A ($25m), B ($125m), C ($200m), and D ($160m). Annual revenue not publicly available.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds Banking Group, ING, Standard Chartered, SEB, Intesa Sanpaolo, Nyca Partners, Molten Ventures, Eurazeo, British Business Bank, Temasek, Morgan Stanley. Strategic partnership with Mastercard (2024).
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount surpassed 500 (per [thoughtmachine.net/about-us](https://www.thoughtmachine.net/about-us)); global expansion into Mexico, Chile, South Korea, Israel, Guatemala; named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Retail Core Banking Systems; client wins include JPMorgan Chase, ING Poland, Intesa Sanpaolo, Kiwibank, and Mox Bank.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Cloud-native architecture** – no legacy code, built from scratch for the cloud, enabling horizontal scaling, high availability, and continuous deployment.
- **Configurability via smart contracts** – banks can create any product without code changes, using a rich library of pre-integrated solutions.
- **API-first and cloud-agnostic** – gives banks flexibility to choose hosting provider and integrate with third-party services.
- **Trusted by top global banks** – many clients are also investors, demonstrating deep industry confidence.

## Strategic Focus
- Continuing global expansion into new territories and winning Tier 1 bank clients.
- Deepening the Vault Payments platform and expanding card/payment scheme support.
- Leveraging the Mastercard partnership to accelerate payments adoption.
- Maintaining product leadership and recognition in core banking (Gartner Leader).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as “world-class in talent and technical ability” with a collaborative, inclusive, and transparent environment. Weekly town halls and CEO Q&A sessions every six weeks.
- **Social & perks**: Free food and drink in all offices, social clubs (wine & cheese, film, sports), sponsored fitness activities (football, basketball, running, climbing).
- **Recognition**: Named #1 Best Place to Work in New York City by Crain’s (2022, 2023) and Best Place to Work by American Banker.
- **Work policy**: Global offices with hybrid/office presence expected for most roles (engineering roles listed on careers page include many office-based positions). Flexibility not explicitly stated but typical for fintech.
- **Engineering culture**: Strong emphasis on software design, scalable cloud infrastructure, and product excellence. Many engineers come from leading tech companies.

## Sources
1. [thoughtmachine.net](https://www.thoughtmachine.net/)
2. [thoughtmachine.net/about-us](https://www.thoughtmachine.net/about-us)
3. [thoughtmachine.net/life-at-thought-machine](https://www.thoughtmachine.net/life-at-thought-machine)
4. [thoughtmachine.net/meet-our-team](https://www.thoughtmachine.net/meet-our-team)
5. [LinkedIn Company Page](https://uk.linkedin.com/company/thought-machine)
6. [Careers Page (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/thought-machine)

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