Principal Engineer (Backend)

As Principal Engineer in the Consumer domain, you will shape scalable, cross-team systems and elevate architectural practice. You’ll drive search and discovery capabilities, partner with engineering managers and product leads, and mentor engineers to raise the quality and long-term health of our platform. You’ll influence technical decisions across domains, balancing user value with practical delivery. This is a high-impact, collaborative role at a company that values curiosity, inclusivity, and real-world impact.

• Private Medical Insurance
• Pension and Life Insurance
• 27 days holiday plus volunteering days
• Hybrid working pattern (2 days in office)
• Life assurance (4x salary)
• Travel loans and Bike to Work scheme

• Design and govern scalable, cross-domain systems; shape the consumer domain architecture with an emphasis on search and discovery.
• Collaborate with EMs and PMs to scope, sequence, and mitigate risk for major initiatives and unblock teams.
• Identify opportunities to improve reuse, performance, and technology decisions; simplify complexity where possible.
• Champion engineering quality, testing, observability, and operational readiness across teams.
• Influence platform services, shared capabilities, and long-term sustainability of the tech estate.
• Mentor senior engineers and tech leads; promote knowledge sharing and cross-domain learning.
• Represent engineering at cross-team level to drive better collaboration and outcomes.
• Assist with moving between high-level architecture and hands-on problem solving when needed.

• Experience delivering complex, high-impact systems across multiple teams or domains.
• Strong ability to communicate clearly, adapt to audience, and bring people along on the journey.
• Strategic thinking with a balance of technical concerns, product value, and organisational context.
• Mentorship and active contribution to engineering culture; trusted by peers and stakeholders.

• clear communication
• empathy
• pragmatism
• Elastic search and discovery capabilities
• Architectural leadership for scalable systems
• Observability and operational readiness