Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer | Up to £100,000 + bonus | Hybrid in Peterborough

I’m working with a global enterprise software organisation that is investing heavily in its AI and cloud engineering capability. Their specialist innovation team is growing and they’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help take AI-driven products from concept through to enterprise-scale production.

This is a senior, hands-on engineering role focused on architecture, distributed systems, cloud services and AI integration. It’s ideal for someone who enjoys solving complex technical problems and influencing engineering direction, rather than managing large teams.

Package:

• Competitive salary DOE
• 5% annual bonus
• Private healthcare
• Car salary sacrifice scheme
• 25 days holiday
• Hybrid working

What you’ll be doing:

• Designing and building cloud-native services and distributed systems
• Taking AI concepts from PoC → MVP → production
• Developing LLM integrations and agentic AI workflows
• Building scalable REST and GraphQL APIs
• Defining architecture and engineering standards
• Improving security, observability and resilience across services
• Collaborating with product, UX and AI specialists to solve real customer problems
• Providing technical leadership and mentoring within a small, highly experienced team

Tech stack:

• C# / .NET
• Python
• Azure
• TypeScript / JavaScript
• REST APIs & GraphQL
• GitHub CI/CD
• LLM APIs and AI-assisted development tooling

The team works across both .NET and Python, so strong experience in both would be ideal.

What they’re looking for:

• Previous experience as a Principal Engineer, Lead Engineer or Software Architect
• Strong architectural judgement and systems design skills
• Experience delivering enterprise software into production
• Deep understanding of distributed systems and cloud architecture
• Ability to work independently and drive technical decisions
• Strong communication and technical leadership skills

Why this role stands out:

You’ll be joining a small R&D-style engineering team (currently 5 engineers) with plans to double in size over the next few months. The environment offers:

• High autonomy
• Minimal bureaucracy
• Fast decision-making
• Exposure to modern AI technologies
• Real influence over technical direction
• The opportunity to build features that will be rolled out across a large global software platform

The interview process is typically completed within 2–3 weeks, and the team is happy to wait for the right person if you’re serving a notice period.

If you’d like to hear more apply now for a confidential conversation.