Principal Software Engineer in Thame

What You’ll Be Doing

• Define and execute engineering strategy across multiple teams and domains.
• Drive architectural decisions that balance business priorities, scalability, security, and long-term sustainability.
• Design solutions that support future growth and evolving customer needs.
• Identify and address technical risks across the organization.
• Establish and evolve engineering standards, best practices, and quality frameworks.
• Drive improvements in performance, reliability, security, and developer productivity.
• Champion modern software engineering principles and continuous improvement.
• Support the evolution of platform, infrastructure, and service architecture.
• Lead the evaluation and adoption of emerging technologies and AI capabilities.
• Drive the integration of AI tools and practices that enhance engineering effectiveness.
• Explore and implement modern AI‑powered development workflows, coding assistants, and agentic systems.
• Help shape the company's approach to AI innovation and organisational adoption.
• Mentor and coach engineers across all levels, from emerging talent to senior technical leaders.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, curiosity, and continuous learning.
• Lead technical discussions, knowledge‑sharing initiatives, and engineering communities of practice.
• Contribute to hiring and technical assessment processes.
• Partner with Product, Design, and Business leaders to align technical strategy with organizational goals.
• Translate business objectives into technical roadmaps and engineering outcomes.
• Influence decision‑making at executive level through clear communication and technical insight.
• Represent the company externally within the technology community and industry forums.

About You

• You’re a highly experienced technologist who combines deep technical expertise with strategic thinking and business acumen.
• You thrive on solving complex problems at scale, influencing engineering direction, and helping others grow.
• Significant experience designing and delivering large‑scale distributed systems.
• Track record of defining technical strategy and driving organisation‑wide engineering outcomes.
• Strong experience working across multiple teams, platforms, and stakeholders.
• Proven ability to balance technical excellence with commercial priorities.
• Exceptional communication skills and the ability to influence at all levels of the organization.

Technical Expertise

• Node.js, Python, and Kotlin
• Modern frontend technologies
• Cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure
• Microservices and distributed architectures
• Containerisation and cloud‑native development
• Security architecture and secure software development practices
• Performance, scalability, and reliability engineering
• Interest in AI‑landscape, including GitHub Copilot, Claude, Amazon Q, and agentic AI frameworks

Nice to Have

• Experience within financial services, property technology, or other regulated industries.
• Exposure to DevSecOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or Platform Engineering environments.
• Knowledge of AI frameworks and technologies such as Anthropic Claude, LangGraph, Hugging Face, LiteLLM, or Pydantic AI.

Benefits

• Annual Leave: 25 days per year, increasing to 27 days after 5 years, plus bank holidays (pro‑rata for part‑time).
• Annual Leave Purchase: Option to purchase up to one working week of additional leave.
• Wellness Days: 4 paid days per year to rest and recharge (pro‑rata for part‑time).
• Paid Volunteer Day: 1 paid day per year to volunteer at a charity of your choice.
• Pension Scheme (Aviva): 6% employer contribution, 4% employee contribution.
• Life Assurance: 4× basic salary.
• Health Flex Pot via Benifex: £800 flexible benefit to spend on health options of your choice (e.g., private health insurance, dental plan, health assessments).
• Additional Benifex perks: voluntary opt‑in for activity pass, discounts via Perkbox, beauty and fitness discount card, cycle to work, motor breakdown, will writing, and other optional benefits.
• Critical Illness Cover: 1× basic salary.
• Group‑wide Equity Plan: Eligibility for participation in the group‑wide employee share plan, subject to annual invitation.
• Enhanced Maternity/Adoption Pay: Up to 20 weeks full pay.
• Enhanced Paternity Pay: Up to 4 weeks full pay.
• Performance‑based Incentive Scheme: Eligibility for a discretionary short‑term incentive plan, based on role and level.
• Learning & Development: Access to LinkedIn Learning and reimbursement of professional membership costs.
• Employee Assistance Programme and wellbeing resources, eye test vouchers, and VDU glasses contribution.
• Office Space: Use of company office workspaces in Leeds and Thame (West Village office).

We are an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or any other protected characteristic.