Who we are

The current system of credit, based on bureau data, is deeply unfair, penalising people who live in lower income areas, people who are new to the country or customers who have used high risk products in the past (such as payday loans). Koyo was founded in 2018, on the principle that everyone should have access to affordable credit regardless of where they are from, where they live, or types of credit that have used.

Many seeking credit are charged excessive fees and interest rates for borrowing that cause financial problems, rather than solve them. We’re changing all that.

Koyo uses innovative technology to offer fairly priced credit to millions of UK customers. We’re based in London, with global ambitions. Koyo is backed by leading venture capital funds (the same funds that backed the likes of Revolut, Transferwise and others) and some of the most reputable angel investors in the UK. Join us, and help put an end to predatory financial firms and be part of an exciting and rewarding journey.

Our story so far

In 2016, Thomas, the founder of Koyo moved to the UK and found accessing credit to be difficult if not impossible. This is because his credit history did not follow him from his home country. He realised that having an imperfect credit history affects millions of people who are new to the country, but also people who have failed to build a credit history in the UK more generally. In September 2018 we raised our first round of venture funding and have since raised further debt and equity funding from VCs and private investors. Our team consists of eight online lending professionals in tech, risk and marketing.

What you’ll be doing:

You will be working in a small fully distributed tech team, led by our experienced CTO, in developing the early versions of our lending product and our back office.

Our Tech Stack

The front end is a React/Redux webapp. The backend is primarily in Kotlin using Spring Boot and exposes a REST/JSON API. We use Google pub/sub for async messaging.

On the infrastructure side, we are using Docker orchestrated with Kubernetes on GCP. Terraform is used to define the infrastructure as code. Source code and CI/CD is with GitLab. Gitlab is also used to manage the backlog and our light-weight Kanban process.

Requirements

• Entrepreneurial and excited about working at an early stage startup.
• Confident in taking a lead role in front-end development - from the UX/UI, through to cutting the code and tests.

• You are passionate about building products that are differentiated by the user experience. But you are also pragmatic – time to market is key.
• You have a growth mindset: You’re excited to learn new things every day and have a passion to inspire and grow.
• Technical excellence with in-depth experience of React and ES8 Javascript.
• Beneficial but not essential: experience in the lending space (or fintech).

Benefits

• This role can either be based in our central London office, 100% remote or a mix of the two.
• Competitive salary.
• Equity in the business - you will own a part of the company that you are helping to build.
• Opportunity to shape the strategy and direction in a company with an important mission.
• Working with bright ambitious people who take pride in what they do.
• You’ll get to join one of the hottest new startups of 2019.