Principal Engineer

Principal Engineer – AI & Cloud ModernisationAre you a hands-on Principal Engineer who wants to shape the future of a large-scale, customer-facing platform while helping drive a major transition towards cloud-native and AI-enabled technology?We’re working with a global technology business that is modernising a highly complex, established software platform and looking for a Principal Engineer to help define the technical direction across the product ecosystem.This is a high-impact role for someone who enjoys operating at the intersection of architecture, engineering leadership, cloud modernisation and AI.The roleAs a Principal Engineer, you'll provide technical leadership across multiple engineering teams and play a key role in defining the future architecture, engineering standards and technology roadmap.You'll be expected to remain technically credible and hands-on while operating at a broader organisational level — influencing senior engineers, architects, product leaders and engineering teams.You'll be responsible for:Setting technical direction and architectural standards across multiple teams and domainsLeading the modernisation of complex legacy applications into scalable, cloud-native platformsDesigning highly available, resilient and high-performance customer-facing systemsIdentifying opportunities to incorporate AI and GenAI into products and engineering workflowsEvaluating emerging technologies and translating them into practical product opportunitiesLeading architecture and design reviews, assessing technical trade-offs and managing technology riskEstablishing engineering standards around design patterns, coding practices, testing and DevOpsMentoring and developing senior engineers and helping raise engineering capability across the organisationTroubleshooting complex technical challenges and providing direction through critical incidentsInfluencing technical strategy and roadmap decisions across organisational boundariesActing as a technical thought leader, bringing new ideas and industry best practices into the organisationWhat we're looking for10+ years of professional software engineering experienceA strong track record building scalable, resilient web-based productsExpert-level experience with C# / .NETStrong object-oriented design and software engineering fundamentalsExcellent understanding of SOLID, DRY, DDD, design patterns and database architectureExperience designing high-traffic, performant REST APIs, ideally with ASP.NETStrong understanding of modern frontend technologies such as React, Angular and TypeScriptExperience with Node.js and PythonStrong public cloud experience, ideally AWSExperience across technologies such as EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, SQS, containers, load balancing and autoscalingExperience modernising large, complex legacy applications into cloud-native architecturesPractical experience with AI/GenAI, including areas such as RAG, prompt engineering and fine-tuningStrong understanding of distributed systems, scalability and reliabilityThe ability to influence and communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholdersA proven ability to mentor engineers and drive engineering best practicesYou'll have the opportunity to influence the technical direction of a major product ecosystem, work across multiple engineering teams and help shape how an established technology platform evolves into a modern, cloud-native and AI-enabled environment.You'll be joining at an important point in the transformation, with the opportunity to influence architecture, AI adoption, engineering standards and long-term technology strategy while helping teams navigate the realities of modernising a complex legacy platform.If you're a Principal or Staff-level engineer who enjoys solving large-scale technical problems, influencing engineering strategy and getting hands-on with modern cloud and AI technologies, this could be a strong fit.