Principal Software Engineer in Leeds

Answer Digital is looking to recruit a Principal Software Engineer to play a pivotal role in shaping how we deliver our large-scale, operationally critical projects. This is a senior leadership opportunity for someone who wants to help set the direction for software engineering at Answer: co-owning capability strategy, raising the technical bar across our teams, and acting as a trusted voice with our biggest clients.

What you'll be doing

• As a key member of the senior Engineering Leadership team, you will help shape the strategy, standards and growth of our largest capability.
• Owning the technical direction across multiple client engagements, ensuring the solutions we propose are sound, deliverable and aligned with each client's wider business and technical strategy.
• Setting and upholding the engineering standards our teams work to, including code quality, security, assurance and operability, and being accountable for the technical quality of what your engagements deliver.
• Leading the technical side of new business: shaping proposals, owning the technical content of bids and pitches, and being a credible senior voice in front of prospective clients.
• Driving continuous improvement of our software development practices, tooling and technology choices across the capability.
• Building trusted relationships with client stakeholders at executive and director level, and acting as the senior technical escalation point across your engagements.
• Shaping how Answer adopts AI-assisted engineering, including the standards and guardrails for its use across our teams and how we offer it to clients.
• Mentoring and developing senior engineers and technical leads, and building a strong pipeline of technical leadership within Answer.
• Representing Engineering in cross-capability and company-wide leadership discussions.
• Representing Answer externally: speaking at and attending events such as Leeds Digital Festival, contributing to the wider engineering community, and helping build Answer's reputation as a place where serious engineering happens.

What you'll bring to Answer

• A strong track record of technical leadership at scale, ideally across multiple teams or projects simultaneously.
• Experience providing technical leadership to clients as well as internal teams, including at executive and director level.
• Hands-on experience delivering large-scale, complex development projects, ideally in a consultancy or software vendor setting.
• Agile delivery experience with continuous delivery, and a strong grasp of secure, operable software: threat modelling, assurance evidence, observability and cloud cost.
• Practical experience adopting AI-assisted engineering tooling within teams, and a clear view on where it helps, where it doesn't, and how to govern its use.
• Deep expertise in .NET, ASP.NET Core and C#.
• Strong SQL and NoSQL database experience.
• AWS/Azure experience.
• JavaScript/TypeScript frameworks.
• The ability to shape our engineering practice, standards and strategy, not just deliver within it.

It would be great if you also had experience in some of these, but if not we'll help you with them:

• Delivering software in regulated environments, particularly health and the NHS, including clinical safety, data protection and public sector assurance requirements.
• Technical involvement in bids, tenders and pre-sales.
• Defining technical solutions involving integration with legacy systems, interoperability and system-to-system integration.
• Common design patterns such as event-based architecture, CQRS and Domain-Driven Design.
• Experience contributing to or owning a capability-level strategy (technology roadmaps, standards, hiring strategy).

The perks of being at Answer

• We’re an Employee-Owned Company. After 12 months – through the Employee Ownership Trust you will be part of the ownership of Answer; a major factor in driving engagement, retention and growth for our people.
• Competitive salary.
• Flexible annual leave (buy/sell and carry forward).
• Twice a year income-tax free bonus based on company performance - it’s a reward for being a part of our EOT journey.
• Continuous training and development - if you want to learn, we’ll provide the support you need.
• Flexible Pension - we match your own contributions up to 5%.
• A flexible Healthcare cash plan so you can fund the care you value most.
• A packed social calendar including; end of year party (partners invited) and Summer away days, monthly and quarterly company team socials.
• Parking at Head Offices in central Leeds, plus Cycle2Work & Green Car Lease schemes to help get you here.
• The chance to give back – get involved nationally and regionally with partnerships to get people from different backgrounds into tech, as well as lots of charity and community events.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Answer we proudly embrace diversity and inclusion - we want to create a safe environment for everyone to bring their true selves to work. We will do everything we can to support your application. If you require any adjustments to be made to your application (whether that’s support with our interview questions, adjusting how we interview, or financial support with our hiring process) then please speak to Jonny Hiles, TA Lead.

A bit more about us.

Answer Digital is a highly successful digital transformation consultancy headquartered in Leeds. We’re a company on a fast growth trajectory with a reputation of delivering large-scale, operational critical solutions. People are at the heart of everything we do - so much so we’re owned by our people. It sets us apart from most digital businesses you’ll meet and defines our culture and values. Our people are invested in everything we do, because we are invested in them.

Our Interview Process

We pride ourselves on having a fair but flexible recruitment process, we want to create a platform where you can show us your best. For us, keeping it simple means you can focus on understanding if our people, values and the work we do are right for you. Our typical process can be broken down into 3 stages:

• Recruiter call: This normally lasts 15-30 minutes. We will talk to you about Answer Digital, the type of work we do, and an overview of the role. We’ll ask you some questions about your current situation and why you’re interested in working here. Here, we’d advise asking any “people” questions, anything about our culture, career progression or approach to flexible working.
• Skills based interview: This interview will be with 2 people, normally from the team you’re applying to work with. We can do this stage remote or in person, whichever you’d prefer. This interview will involve questions around your experience, the skills you’ve gained and the work you’ve done. We’ll also ask questions about the role and challenges you might face and how you’d face them. Here, we’d recommend asking questions about the role, the day to day responsibilities and what life in the team is like.
• Cultural/Value interview: This interview will be with 2 of our Leadership team, either our Directors or Capability Leads. It will focus on our culture and values, talking about our values and what they mean to us as well as understanding what values are important to you and how you like to work. This interview is about making sure Answer is right for you, as much as the other way around. Here, we advise you to ask as many questions around our business model, our ambitious growth plans and anything to do with Answer as a business.