Principal Engineer

The Principal Engineer may be expected to take charge of engineering work across an ensemble of teams or in a particular area of the business. You will be responsible for ensuring that engineering work can be done effectively in their area, relying on context provided by your Lead Engineers and peers. You may be expected to line manage or supervise multiple Lead Engineers. 

As a Principal Engineer, you will also have a strategic focus, providing insight to project and programme management teams to support effective resourcing decisions, and to assurance teams and processes to ensure engineering standards are consistently met. You will act as the central point of contact for engineers within your area, ensuring that systems are sustainable, maintainable, and aligned with the Government Digital and Data Profession Strategy. 

Along with the other Senior, Lead and Principal engineers in your area you will be responsible for ensuring that all technical approaches being used are appropriate and endorsed and will take part in planning with senior stakeholders to make sure that product delivery and maintenance is on a firm basis. Your remit may be across the engineering function but working closely with Architects and other professions. 

Tools and Technologies we use: 

We would encourage applications from candidates with experience or interests in the following technologies: 

• Back End – API design and middle tier design using a modern language (Java, Python, JavaScript). 
• Front End– Implementing user interfaces using JavaScript, Java or equivalent languages. 
• Cloud Platform AWS/Containerization/Docker/Kubernetes.

Main Responsibilities

Your main day to day responsibilities will be:  

• 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. 

Essential Skills

You will have demonstrable experience leading engineering for large-scale, secure, data-intensive services, with the following essential skills:

• Leading the design and evolution of enterprise-scale NodeJS services (e.g. NodeJS, React, RESTful APIs, microservices) to ensure performance, scalability, and resilience in a live operational environment. (PROG) 
• Defining and assuring software design standards, coding practices, and engineering governance aligned to GDS service standards and secure-by-design principles. (SWDN) 
• Overseeing end-to-end systems development and delivery across multiple teams, ensuring alignment to architectural patterns (e.g. event-driven, microservices) and integration with legacy and distributed systems. (DLMG) 
• Driving quality engineering practices including automated testing (unit, integration), CI/CD pipelines (e.g. Jenkins, GitHub Actions), and observability (logging, monitoring, alerting) to support high-availability services. (PDSV) 
• Managing technical risk, compliance, and service sustainability, including secure handling of sensitive data, audit requirements, and alignment with Home Office governance and operational frameworks. (QUMG) 
• Developing engineering capability through coaching, mentoring, and workforce planning, building strong engineering expertise and supporting continuous professional development across teams. (PEMT)