Role - Principal Backend Engineer
Salary - £80,000 – £95,000
Location - Manchester
Work Pattern - Hybrid
The Role
We’re looking for an experienced Principal Backend Engineer to join a growing engineering team working on a new, high-performance payments platform.
This is a hands-on role where you’ll remain heavily involved in software development while providing technical leadership across architecture, engineering standards, code quality and best practices.
You’ll work closely with senior engineers and other technical disciplines, taking ownership of features from design through to implementation, testing, deployment and ongoing support.
What you'll be doing
Designing, building and shipping high-quality backend features.
Working with asynchronous and event-driven systems.
Providing technical guidance and mentoring to other engineers.
Making key architectural and technical decisions.
Writing clean, secure, well-tested and maintainable code.
Reviewing code and helping establish engineering standards.
Building and maintaining automated tests and CI/CD pipelines.
Integrating third-party services and APIs.
Working with cloud and platform engineers to build highly reliable systems.
Using AI coding tools as part of your day-to-day development.
Supporting the wider engineering team in adopting AI-assisted development effectively.
Taking ownership of features throughout the full software development lifecycle.
The Essentials
Strong commercial experience with Java, Kotlin or Scala.
Proven experience designing and building backend/distributed systems.
Strong experience with event-driven and asynchronous architectures.
Strong database experience, such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, DynamoDB or Cosmos DB.
Experience integrating third-party services and APIs.
Strong understanding of testing, version control, CI/CD and secure coding practices.
Experience mentoring engineers and contributing to technical standards.
Comfortable working with a high degree of autonomy and ownership.
Fluency with AI coding tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, GitHub...
Principal Backend Engineer employer: Candour Solutions Careers
Join a dynamic and well-established technology business in South Manchester, where you will not only lead a talented technical team but also have genuine opportunities for career advancement into senior management roles. With a strong focus on employee development, a collaborative work culture, and the chance to make a significant impact on service delivery, this company is committed to fostering a rewarding environment for its staff. Enjoy competitive salary packages and the satisfaction of working in a supportive atmosphere that values innovation and excellence.
