Principal Engineer - Contract - Outside IR35

We are currently looking for an experienced Principal Engineer to join us on a contract basis. This is a hybrid position and will require 3 days per week on client site in Central London.

Requirements

Role responsibilities

• Define and drive technical strategy, architecture, and engineering standards across the Personalisation domain
• Design and deliver scalable systems supporting personalisation, search, recommendations, and ML-powered features
• Partner closely with Product, Data Science, and Design to deliver customer-centric solutions
• Lead and influence technical decision-making across multiple teams and platforms
• Mentor and support senior engineers, helping to raise the overall engineering capability
• Improve engineering quality, reliability, and productivity through best practices, tooling, and platform enhancemen

Who you are

• An experienced technical leader with a strong background in Java/Python and large-scale production systems
• Strong experience working with Machine Learning systems and collaborating with Data Science teams
• Skilled in system design and architecture, with the ability to deliver scalable, high-quality solutions
• Comfortable working across cross-functional environments with multiple stakeholders
• Passionate about growing others and driving engineering excellence
• A strong communicator who can influence technical and business decisions at all levels