How to Land a £175k Monzo Engineer Role (Visa Sponsor)

Job of the Week: How to Land This £175k Senior Staff Engineer Role at Monzo (Visa Sponsorship Included)

Every week, we deconstruct one incredible job opportunity to show you exactly how to approach it strategically. This week, we’re looking at a career-defining role: a Senior Staff Backend Engineer on the Growth team at Monzo.

With a salary range of £140,000 – £175,000, this is a top-tier engineering position. But what makes it truly exceptional is the offer of full visa sponsorship and assistance in relocating to the UK, making it a golden opportunity for top global talent. This is a fully remote role based anywhere in the UK, with the option to work from their London office.

Let’s break down what it takes to land this job.

1. The Mission: What is the “Growth” Team at Monzo?

First, understand this isn’t a generic backend role. You’re applying to the Growth team. Their mission, according to the job ad, is to “make Monzo magically easy to use, and delightful to share.”

What this means for you: This is a product-focused engineering role. Your success isn’t just measured in code quality; it’s measured in user acquisition, activation, and retention. You need to be as passionate about the customer experience as you are about distributed systems. In your application, you must demonstrate a “product-led” mindset. Talk about the impact your work has had on users, not just the technical details.

2. Deconstructing the Role: What “Senior Staff Engineer” Really Means

At this level, you are far more than a coder. You are a technical leader, a mentor, and a force multiplier for your team.

“Drive the technical strategy…”: You won’t just be picking up tickets from a backlog. You’ll be defining the technical roadmap for the Growth team, making high-level architectural decisions, and anticipating future challenges.
“Mentoring other engineers…”: A huge part of your job will be elevating the skills of those around you through code reviews, pairing sessions, and architectural guidance.
“Collaborating with a cross-functional team…”: You need to speak the language of Product Managers, Data Scientists, and Designers. They need a technical partner who can translate business goals into robust engineering solutions.

3. The Tech Stack & Must-Have Skills

This is where the technical bar is set incredibly high.

The Non-Negotiable: Deep, extensive experience in building and scaling backend systems using Go (Golang). The job description makes it clear this is their primary language. Experience with microservices architecture and distributed systems (like Kafka) is absolutely essential.
The Standout Experience: Proven experience working in a “Growth Engineering” or “Product-Led Growth” environment. Have you built A/B testing frameworks? Have you worked on user onboarding flows? Have you instrumented code to track user behavior? This experience is your key differentiator.

4. The “Spike” Strategy: How to Make Your Application Unforgettable

For a £175k role, a standard CV and cover letter are not enough. You need a “spike”—a high-impact element that makes you stand out from hundreds of other talented applicants.

Create a “Growth Engineering Proposal” PDF.

Instead of just saying you have a product mindset, prove it. In a concise 1-2 page document, research and propose a small growth experiment for Monzo.

Identify a Friction Point: Use the Monzo app (or read user reviews). Find a small area in the onboarding or sharing flow that could be smoother.
Propose an A/B Test: Outline a simple A/B test to address this. For example, “Hypothesis: Changing the wording on the ‘Invite a Friend’ button from X to Y will increase click-through rate.”
Outline the Technicals: Briefly describe how you would technically implement this. What backend service would it touch? What metrics would you track?
Define Success: How would you measure if the experiment was a success?

Attaching this thoughtful, well-researched document to your application demonstrates initiative, product sense, and technical acumen in a way no CV ever could. It moves you from “applicant” to “potential colleague.”

Ready to apply? This is a career-making role at one of the world’s leading FinTech companies. If you have the deep backend skills and the product-focused mindset they’re looking for, this is your chance.

You can find the official job posting and apply here:
Monzo Senior Staff Backend Engineer, Growth on Greenhouse