Lead Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer (Platform Leadership)

Manchester (Hybrid – 2 days onsite)

£110k + 20% bonus + £7k car allowance

No visa sponsorship available

The Opportunity

This is NOT ANOTHER Principal role.

This is a “Principal of Principals” position - a rare opportunity to sit at the centre of a greenfield, enterprise-scale SaaS platform that is redefining how a complex, high-volume ecosystem connects, operates, and scales.

You’ll be shaping a revolutionary connected platform - bringing together multiple systems, data streams, and services into a single, intelligent, event-driven architecture designed to operate at serious scale.

This is the kind of role where:

• The problems are real
• The scale is meaningful
• And your decisions actually shape the future of the platform

What You’ll Be Building

• A greenfield, cloud-native SaaS platform
• Designed around event-driven, distributed architecture
• Connecting multiple services, products, and data domains into a unified ecosystem
• Built to handle high throughput, real-time decisioning, and complex workflows

This is not maintenance.

This is platform creation at enterprise scale.

Your Role in It

You won’t just contribute — you’ll define how it’s done.

• Act as the technical authority across multiple teams and domains
• Set engineering standards across architecture, design, and delivery
• Guide and mentor other senior and principal engineers
• Make high-impact architectural decisions that shape the platform long-term
• Stay hands-on where it matters — this is not an ivory tower role
• Partner closely with Product and Data to solve complex, high-value problems

Tech Environment

• .NET (core to everything)
• Azure cloud ecosystem
• Event-driven architecture (messaging, streaming, async processing)
• Microservices and distributed systems
• CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps practices
• High-performance data processing and system optimisation

Why This Role Stands Out

Greenfield, done properly

No legacy constraints - you’ll help define:

• Architecture
• Patterns
• Standards
• Ways of working

Enterprise scale, real impact

This isn’t theory - the platform will:

• Power critical business operations
• Process high volumes of data and transactions
• Be used daily across multiple regions

World class engineering environment

You’ll be surrounded by:

• Strong senior engineers
• Modern practices
• A genuine push to raise the technical bar

Career-defining role

This is the kind of role that leads to:

• Head of Engineering
• Architecture leadership
• Platform ownership at scale

What We’re Looking For

• Deep experience in .NET / backend engineering
• Proven track record building scalable, distributed systems
• Experience in enterprise SaaS or platform environments
• Strong architectural thinking — able to design for scale, resilience, and performance
• Someone who can lead technically, influence broadly, and still stay hands-on

Important

• No visa sponsorship available
• Must be able to work 2 days per week onsite in Manchester

The Honest Sell

This role is for someone who:

• Is already operating at a high level
• Wants to work on bigger, more meaningful problems
• Wants to shape a platform, not just contribute to one
• Still enjoys being close to the code, but wants real influence