Principle Engineer

Role: Principal Engineer

Start Date: August 2025
Contract Length: 12 Months
Work Location: Remote
IR35 Status: Inside IR35
Security Clearance: SC & NPPV3 Cleared

Join a major government programme where you’ll lead multiple engineering teams, develop critical digital services, and support 24/7 live systems. This is a leadership role within a SAS team, focused on building high-quality applications and infrastructure using modern engineering practices.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and mentor teams of engineers across complex digital service projects
• Engage with senior business and technical stakeholders
• Provide technical assurance on design, risk mitigation, and standards compliance
• Shape and refine engineering backlogs and develop user stories
• Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement
• Contribute to and maintain critical service applications in production
• Support development of microservices with focus on security, scalability and reliability
• Ensure best practice in code quality (TDD, SOLID principles, peer reviews)
• Support API architecture, observability, and service monitoring
• Participate in a 24/7 on-call rota (Level 3 support)

Required Experience:

• Proven experience leading engineering teams on complex digital projects
• Excellent knowledge of at least one 4GL, object-oriented analysis and design
• Experienced in backlog refinement & preparing user stories
• Familiarity with DDaT frameworks, GDS standards & SOLID / best practices
• SC Cleared & Eligible for NPPV3 clearance

Desirable Skills:

• JavaScript / Vue.js & PHP/Drupal & WordPress (database tuning, CDN, caching)
• Knowledge of AWS DevOps principles & Docker, Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, Git
• C#, Java (Springboot, JPA/Hibernate), REST APIs, observability & monitoring, queue technologies & security
• History working on building new, evolving, high availability microservices with data integrity
• Strong understanding of test methodologies: JUnit, TDD, Integration Tests & E2E
• Experience working with relational databases: PostgreSQL