As a Principal Software Engineer, you will guide the technical evolution of a live enterprise platform, transitioning it from a monolithic architecture to a scalable, AI-enabled foundation. Your work will directly influence the direction of engineering across product squads, ensuring robustness for current clients while enabling future innovation.
What You'll Do
You'll lead the Architecture Guild, setting standards, documenting key decisions, and fostering accountability across teams. You'll be central to integrating AI capabilities—such as LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and semantic search—into core product features, helping the organization adopt intelligent systems responsibly and effectively.
Through pairing and code reviews, you'll support engineers in solving complex problems, emphasizing collaboration over top-down solutions. You’ll coach through inquiry and shared effort, helping others grow while advancing system quality. You’ll also contribute to hiring, helping identify and bring on engineers who align with both technical needs and cultural values.
Your input will be critical in strategic decisions around building versus buying, platform investments, and tooling choices. You’ll ensure architectural decisions consider long-term scalability, maintainability, and business impact.
Requirements
You have deep experience designing and operating backend systems at scale, with a track record of delivering in production environments. You’re fluent in AI integration, having implemented LLM-powered features or RAG pipelines in real-world applications. You write code regularly and take ownership of its quality and impact.
You communicate complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences and lead by influence, not authority. You approach mentorship with curiosity and patience, using dialogue and joint problem-solving to elevate others. You understand that engineering choices affect business outcomes and act accordingly.
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience with .NET Core, React, or Azure cloud services
- Background in B2B SaaS, marketing technology, or enterprise software
- Direct work with vector databases, semantic search, or RAG implementations
- Experience contributing to or leading architecture review processes
- Proven ability to build engineering practices in a scale-up environment
Benefits
- Combined pension contributions of up to 12% of salary
- Performance-based annual pay reviews and company-linked bonus scheme
- Referral bonuses for successful hires
- 33 days of annual leave, including public holidays, with flexibility to buy or sell additional days
- Two paid health days per year to support personal wellbeing
- Two paid days per year to volunteer with a charity of your choice
- Enhanced sick pay from day one and access to coaching and counselling through Plumm
- Hybrid work model with primary remote work in Scotland and periodic travel to Edinburgh
- Quarterly company-wide meetups and regular in-person team gatherings
