This week, we’re spotlighting Carissa Dean, one of our Senior Engineers up in Manchester! Read on to discover how she transitioned into tech, her passion for building seamless customer onboarding experiences, and what she’s most excited about as Engine continues to scale.
Tell us about your engineering journey and what your specific role involves at Engine by Starling.
I’ve been surrounded by tech for as long as I can remember. My dad’s work with computers sparked an early interest that stayed with me, and I followed that path through my studies in Information Technology. At University I studied IT Management for Business, focusing on the intersection between business and technology, but I didn’t actually write much code. That changed when I took part in a Python taster session and then a 24-hour hackathon, which I really enjoyed and led to me deciding to pursue a Software Engineering career.
I kicked off my career through a graduate scheme at an Investment Bank designed for STEM graduates who hadn’t studied Computer Science. After the scheme’s three-month Java bootcamp, I spent several years building tools to support a large-scale data center migration. From there, I spent just over three years in the cybersecurity world, working in areas such as API standards and tooling and engineering mission-critical systems where reliability was imperative.
Today, I lead one of our Onboarding teams at Engine. We’re responsible for the very first "handshake" a customer has with a bank - whether they’re opening their first account or their tenth. Our mission is to take a complex process and make it effortlessly configurable for our clients.
How have your first three months been? What’s the coolest technical challenge you’ve tackled so far?
My first three months have been a whirlwind! In my first week I was tasked with diagnosing and fixing an API suffering from high latency. It was the perfect "welcome to the team" because it forced me to dive deep into our codebase and play around with our monitoring and tracing tools immediately. I discovered we were making thousands of redundant downstream calls to the database. I managed to optimise that down to fewer than 10, and seeing the latency plummet was incredibly satisfying.
What has been the biggest surprise about the way we build and collaborate here compared to previous roles?
The level of autonomy here has been a breath of fresh air. At Engine, we’re encouraged to be innovators. If you have an idea for a better way of doing things or a new feature, the culture doesn't just allow you to pursue it - it actively champions it. That sense of ownership over your work is something you don't find everywhere.
What’s your top tip for a new engineer joining the Manchester team to hit the ground running?
Don't wait to dive in! My top tip is to get your local environment and the test app running as soon as you can. We’ve put a lot of effort into our onboarding documentation to make the process seamless. We encourage everyone to complete a release within their first week, this is an important part of how we build at Engine so getting to understand this early on is super valuable.
What are you most excited to build or learn as Engine continues to scale in the Manchester tech scene?
AI adoption at Engine is growing every day, and we’ve recently integrated some incredibly exciting AI tooling. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it transforms the way we build. Beyond the tech, our Manchester base is expanding rapidly and because we have so many different domains represented here, there’s always something new to learn from a colleague.
