Principal Software Engineer in Altrincham

Xanalys, a Harris Computer company, is currently recruiting for a Principal Software Engineer on a permanent, remote-working basis. This role sits in a small, high-trust business unit supporting a cross-functional, cross-product platform portfolio: legacy and greenfield applications, developer tooling, internal dashboards, and company-wide tools.

This is a senior individual contributor role with technical leadership influence (no direct reports), working closely with the Platform Team Lead and Director of R&D.

• AI workflow usage and implementation are a key part of this role: use AI tooling heavily and daily, and design/ship agentic workflows that improve team delivery.
• Maintain a quality and testing-first engineering approach: automated unit, integration, end-to-end, and acceptance testing are core to delivery.
• Own SRE and DevOps outcomes as a top priority: reliability, observability, operability, CI/CD health, and continuous improvement are part of day-to-day ownership.

• Work profile: approximately 80% hands-on engineering, 20% planning, triage, review, retros, and technical leadership activities.
• Ownership: own modules and features end-to-end (design, build, test, release, production support), not entire enterprise products.
• Landscape influence: understand the broader enterprise landscape, form strong technical opinions, and drive change across products.
• Stewardship: adopt and stabilise orphaned modules, then bring them up to current standards.

• Use AI tooling heavily and daily: Copilot, Claude, and agentic workflows, including creation of skills, agents, rules, plugins, instructions, and prompt patterns.
• Champion and train others (technical and non-technical) in collaborative AI tooling and workflow agentification.
• Ensure outward communication is human-curated, concise, and thoughtful; never publish unedited AI output.
• Maintain a quality and testing-first approach with automated unit, integration, end-to-end, and acceptance testing.
• Deliver and improve complex enterprise systems spanning hybrid monoliths and standalone modules.
• Build, scale, and optimise solutions across .NET, SQL Server, Azure, Terraform, Docker, PowerShell, bash, XML, and XSL.
• Own CI and CD through Azure DevOps pipelines, including quality gates and deployment automation.
• Run structured release management using established CD systems, disciplined tagging/versioning, and Jira release management.
• Integrate and support third-party components, packages, and integrations.
• Follow established patterns and practices, and introduce better ones where justified.

• Significant hands-on engineering experience with deep .NET and SQL Server capability.
• Comprehensive scripting capability in PowerShell and bash for build, deployment, operations, and troubleshooting.
• Proven CI/CD and release management capability (including tagging/versioning and Jira release practices).
• Strong ownership mindset, proactive communication, and high personal organisation.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor others and raise technical standards through influence.
• Confidence working directly with customer technical teams in regulated settings.
• Ability and willingness to obtain Security Clearance.

• Experience scaling and optimising legacy systems.

Xanalys specialise in providing powerful software capabilities for threat assessment, investigative case management, and advanced crime and fraud analytics. Our solutions help our clients to manage multi-jurisdiction major crime investigations, assess and analyse suspicious financial transactions, capture and act upon intelligence reports, and disclose evidence in a court-ready format to ensure successful outcomes.

Harris offers an extremely competitive UK employee benefits programme. 5 Personal Days leave entitlement are granted over and above the standard 25 days holiday and bank holidays. Harris also offers all UK employees an annual Lifestyle Reward of £325. Other benefits included such as Private Medical, Death in Service, Discounts etc.

Our recruitment process will comprise of an interview with the lead recruiter followed by a take home test. As an equal opportunities employer, we want to make sure we do all we can to make this a positive experience for you. When applying, please make us aware of any adjustments or additional support we can provide you with before or on the day of an interview.