Principal Engineer

You will lead and inspire multiple engineering teams, setting the technical direction for a platform that must remain resilient, scalable, secure and ready to meet the evolving demands of modern law enforcement. Your decisions will directly influence how the Home Office adopts, builds and operates cloud‑native services—ensuring the systems we deliver are sustainable, innovative and aligned with the Government Digital and Data Profession strategy.  

As the central engineering authority for your area, you will shape architectural approaches, guide technical standards, and act as a trusted partner to senior leaders across architecture, delivery, cloud technology, and security. You will also be a key voice in project and programme decision‑making, ensuring our cloud capabilities are future‑focused, well‑resourced and engineered to the highest standard.  

This is a rare opportunity to lead at national scale—driving innovation, influencing strategic cloud adoption, and helping transform how law‑enforcement systems are engineered and delivered across the UK. 

Tools and Technologies we use: 

We are keen for Engineers to continue learning new technologies, we have a large range in the Home Office including: 

• Platform Engineering: AWS, CI/CD Pipelines, Landing Zones, Containerization  
• Data: PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Mongodb, Apache Cassandra   
• DevOps: AWS, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Docker, Ansible, Terraform 
• AI: Azure ML Studio, Python, Github Copilot, OpenAI  

Main responsibilities 

• Define and drive the technical vision and strategy for LECP, ensuring alignment with departmental and national priorities. 
• Champion multi-disciplinary, product-centric ways of working across the platform. 
• Supporting implementation against strategy; leading multiple engineering teams in line with our architecture and professions.
• Planning our workforce and recruiting civil servants, building a strong technical talent pool; coaching and mentoring as necessary.
• Ensuring the engineering activities undertaken in teams under your supervision are following suitable standards.
• Supporting technical decision making, feeding into roadmaps and overall strategy for the Engineering function in your area. Presenting decisions up and down the organisation clearly. 
• Coordinating with other engineering leads to form an overall community, acting as the central point of contact in your area and leading collaborative efforts.

UK residency and security requirements       

For meaningful security checks to be carried out, individuals need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time. Learn more on our website. Security Checks - Home Office Careers. 

Please note that this role requires Security Check (SC) clearance, which would normally need 5 years’ UK residency in the past 5 years. Candidates must also hold or be prepared to undergo NPPV3 clearance.

However, in exceptional circumstances security clearance applications for candidates who have been present in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years may be considered. Failure to meet this residency requirement will result in your security clearance application being rejected.