Company details

HEADCOUNT

100-499

ORG TYPE

Corporate

SECTOR

Manufacturing & Industrials

WEBSITE

http://www.smart.co/

About the company

Smart is a UK-founded fintech focused on retirement, savings and financial wellbeing, best known for the Smart Pension workplace pension and the Keystone retirement platform. Smart positions the business as a global retirement platform provider, working with large financial partners and employers. Hiring spans pensions operations, legal, finance, engineering and risk, with roles advertised through a central careers site. Public employer profiles also describe Smart as a mid-sized organisation with a regulated-finance pace and longer-term product horizons.

Locations and presence

Smart lists offices in London plus hubs in Poland (Warsaw and Kraków), Spain (Jávea), and the US (Watkinsville, Georgia). Many roles are listed as hybrid, with London appearing as the main concentration for corporate functions.

Palpable Score

64.4

/ 100

Smart has some real early-career entry points (including junior engineering hiring signals) and solid baseline benefits, plus a visible personal development allowance. Scores are held back by inconsistent evidence of early-career progression and at least one public account of poor candidate experience for a junior role.

Pillar 1: Early-career access

Score

12.7

/ 20

The company’s public hiring footprint leans mid-senior in current vacancies (for example legal, pensions support specialist, and finance manager roles), which limits always-on entry access.
Smart appears in public interview logs for roles like Junior Frontend Engineer, showing that junior-level hiring exists rather than only experienced hiring.
The company has been advertised externally with trainee-style roles (for example Trainee Financial Accountant), but Smart does not consistently label or group “graduate” pathways on the main careers site, so early-career routes are harder to spot.

Pillar 2: Hiring fairness and transparency

Score

13.0

/ 20

The company publishes a dedicated recruitment data notice and runs hiring through a structured careers platform, which is a baseline fairness signal.
Smart has public interview feedback describing a multi-step process (screening plus technical and managerial rounds), which helps candidates anticipate what “good looks like.”
The company also has a public junior-candidate account describing being scheduled then ghosted, which is a material transparency and respect issue even if isolated.

Pillar 3: Learning and support

Score

14.7

/ 20

The company offers a recurring £500 personal development allowance for courses, conferences, or training materials, which is a practical learning budget even for juniors.
Smart advertises internal learning formats like hackathons and “lunch and learns,” which are good signals for structured skill-building beyond day-to-day tickets.
The company’s public employee sentiment includes “limited professional growth” in some reviews, which suggests coaching and progression support can vary by team.

Pillar 4: Pay fairness and stability

Score

13.3

/ 20

The company publishes a concrete benefits list including pension matching (up to 5%), health insurance, enhanced parental leave, and sabbatical eligibility, which supports stability for early-career hires.
Smart references Living Wage accreditation and Living Pension accreditation on the careers site, which is a stronger pay-floor signal than “competitive salary” copy alone.
The company rarely posts salary ranges alongside roles, so pay fairness cannot be verified role-by-role and the score is capped by missing evidence.

Pillar 5: Early-career outcomes

Score

10.7

/ 20

The company’s public employer-review metrics place “career opportunities” below areas like work-life balance, which is a warning sign for promotion clarity.
Smart has employee reviews that describe a stable environment but limited advancement, which is a negative for early-career momentum if you want fast scope growth.
The company does not publish measurable early-career outcomes (promotion timelines, internal mobility rates, internship-to-offer conversion, or 12–24 month retention), so this pillar cannot score higher on public proof.