Principal Engineer

Principal Engineer — Digital Experience Platform

UK FinTech · Yorkshire (Hybrid, 3 days on-site) · Permanent

A you looking for a senior role where you can be responsible for setting the engineering north star for digital experiences seen by millions of people every month?

Our client's public websites and digital journeys are their digital branches — the front door for members, brokers, prospects and online visitors who come to self-serve for products, services and support. Their Design System keeps the experience consistent, accessible and intuitive across every product and platform they build.

This is a brand-new Principal Engineer role at the heart of that work, and it's a genuine seat at the senior technical table.

Why this role matters

You'll own the engineering tenets, patterns and roadmap that the Digital Experience Platform — and the teams who build on it — depend on every day. You'll set the technical direction across an enterprise content management platform, the Design System, and the wider stack (with various systems built across .Net, React, React Native & Java), and you'll make small, safe, frequent changes the norm rather than the exception.

In short: you shape how the team build, deploy and operate — and you raise the bar for everyone around you.

What you'll be doing

• Help set the engineering north star. Define the patterns, guardrails and architectural boundaries that let teams ship with low lead times, high deployment frequency, low change-failure rate and fast recovery.
• Own the Golden Path. Design and evolve secure-by-default, policy-as-code CI/CD, progressive delivery and on-demand, data-ready environments.
• Drive Value–Flow–Quality. Improve delivery flow, embed quality inside CI, strengthen test automation, and build release-linked observability that ties every deployment to real signals.
• Mature use of the enterprise CMS and Design System — maximising platform capabilities, lifting developer experience, and giving front-end and web engineering first-class foundations.
• Be a multiplier. Coach and mentor engineers, functionally lead a cohort within the platform, run Communities of Practice, raise the hiring bar, and improve decisions through clear technical narratives.
• Shape how AI accelerates engineering — from flow, code quality and testing through to deployment — and help set the direction for how we adopt it well.

What you'll bring

• Deep, modern engineering craft — secure-by-design, cloud-native architecture, distributed systems, API/event patterns, resilience engineering, IaC and policy-as-code CI/CD. You're comfortable setting baselines and boundaries other teams adopt with confidence.
• Enterprise CMS experience — strong experience with an enterprise / cloud content management platform is what matters here. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM/AEMaaCS) would be highly desirable but is not essential.
• Stack adaptability — the platform is partly Java-based and partly Microsoft (.NET), so transferable engineering judgement matters far more than any single language. You move comfortably across stacks.
• Delivery physics mastery — a proven track record of shortening lead time and increasing safe, fast deployment frequency.
• Front-end & web expertise — accessibility, site performance, technical optimisation and cross-platform UI consistency.
• People leadership — real experience coaching, mentoring and developing engineers, and building a high-performance culture where psychological safety and high standards co-exist.
• Cross-functional influence — you partner seamlessly with Architecture, Platform Ownership, UI Design, DevSecOps, Environments, Release, QE, Risk and Audit, balancing speed with compliance-as-code.

> A note on titles: you might currently be a Principal Engineer, Engineering Manager, Tech Lead or Software Architect. What matters is that your actual scope and impact match to the role.

Where you'll work

Hybrid, based at newly refurbished, collaborative head office in North Yorkshire. The business works to anchor days (so on-site time is purposeful collaboration, not attendance for its own sake), with flexibility around start and finish times. Three days a week on-site, with Tuesday as a likely fixed anchor.

What's in it for you

A starting salary of between £61,500 – £81,500

Annual discretionary bonus scheme

25 days' annual leave + bank holidays, rising one day per year of service to a maximum of 30

Holiday trading scheme — buy and sell additional annual leave

Matching employer pension contribution (up to 10% per annum)

Colleague mortgage (conditions apply)

Salary sacrifice scheme for hybrid & electric cars

Private medical insurance for all colleagues

3 paid volunteering days per year

Inclusive colleague networks to join, including our Carers and Pride Alliance groups

Wellbeing benefits including cycle-to-work and discounted gym membership

A genuine commitment to training and development

About the organisation

Our client is one of the UK's leading financial services companies — proudly member-owned rather than answerable to shareholders. That ownership shapes everything: every decision is about doing the right thing for customers and colleagues. Whatever your background or ambitions, they'll help you grow, thrive and shape a better future.

This is a genuinely modern engineering organisation, partway through a real transformation around platform ownership, flow and delivery effectiveness — and you'd be central to it.

Ready to make an impact?

This search is being led exclusively by James Westwood at WRK digital, who is handling all initial conversations and shortlisting on behalf of WRK digital. For a confidential discussion about the role, the team and the wider engineering transformation underway, get in touch directly: james@wrkdigital.co.uk

Our client is an inclusive employer and welcomes applications from all backgrounds.