Principle Software Engineer | DefenceTech

Principal / Lead / Chief Software Engineer

Defence Tech Startup | London (Hybrid) | Up to £200k Base + Equity

We’re partnered with one of the most exciting defence technology startups in Europe — founded by ex-Founding Engineers from Palantir Technologies and already building a genuinely world-class engineering team.

This is a rare opportunity to join an elite group of engineers tackling national security and real-world operational problems at massive scale. The company is building mission-critical systems that sit at the intersection of software, hardware, networking, and distributed systems.

They’re looking for a senior technical leader who can shape architecture, mentor engineers, and help scale both systems and team capability as the business grows.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Leading the design and development of highly reliable distributed systems
• Driving architecture decisions across event-driven and real-time systems
• Working closely with hardware, networking, and infrastructure teams
• Mentoring and guiding high-performing engineers
• Taking ownership of technical direction and engineering standards
• Contributing to hiring and team growth
• Helping build scalable systems designed for high-stakes environments

Tech Environment

The company primarily builds in Rust, but they are deliberately language-agnostic when hiring.

Strong candidates could come from backgrounds including:

• Java, C++, Go, Python

What matters most is exceptional engineering ability, systems thinking, and experience building complex scalable platforms.

What They’re Looking For

• Outstanding software engineering fundamentals
• Experience building distributed or event-driven systems
• Strong understanding of networking, infrastructure, or systems engineering
• Background working on complex backend platforms or performance-critical systems
• Previous technical leadership experience
• People management experience is helpful but not essential

Why Join?

• Exceptional compensation — up to £200k base salary + meaningful equity
• Work alongside an elite engineering team from top startups and research environments
• Solve genuinely difficult technical problems with real-world impact
• High ownership, low bureaucracy environment
• Backed by serious funding and operating with enormous ambition

Location

Hybrid working in London, with a strong preference for engineers who enjoy spending significant time in-office collaborating with the team.

If you’d be open to hearing more, I’d be happy to share additional details.