Principal Software Engineer

Some engineers want to lead without giving up the keyboard. If that's you, keep reading.

VIVA Tech Talent are working with a growing, mission-driven tech scale-up in Belfast that's looking for a hands-on Principal Engineer. You'd be the technical lead for your product area and still be writing code every day. No ivory tower here.

What you'd be doing

• Setting the design principles, test strategy and coding standards for your area
• Shaping how the team ships small changes often, and how it looks after things in production
• Helping lead how AI is used to build and run software, sensibly
• Pairing, writing tests first and shipping like everyone else
• Helping senior engineers grow, and having a real say in who joins the team

What you'd bring

• Genuine XP experience: TDD, DDD, pairing, refactoring as you go
• Continuous delivery know-how (trunk-based development, feature flags)
• Experience setting standards across more than just your own team
• Ownership of reliability and incidents when things go wrong
• A considered view on AI in engineering, not just enthusiasm for it
• The ability to explain technical decisions clearly to anyone in the room

Why we think it's worth a chat

• You'd be trusted to get on with it. The culture is direct, honest and refreshingly free of politics, and the work makes a real difference beyond the screen.
• Strong benefits package, including private medical.