Principal Developer​/Technical Architect

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Date: 28 Aug 2026

Location: Gatwick, GB

Salary: Up to £71,957

Contract Type: Permanent

Security Level: SC

Location: Gatwick – Hybrid

Visa Restrictions: This position does not offer visa sponsorship

Closing Date:
Friday 18th September 2026

Screening Calls:
From w/c 21st September 2026

Interview Date: w/c Monday 5th October 2026

We are the UK's aviation and aerospace regulator and recognised as a world leader in its field. Our activities are diverse, enabling the aviation industry to meet the highest safety standards, and we pride ourselves on our ability to adapt to the constantly evolving aviation environment.

Please note that both a CV and a cover letter are required for any application detailing how you meet the person specification for the role as well as answering the below questions:

What attracts you to this role?

How does your experience and approach prepare you to succeed in this role?

We are the UK's aviation and aerospace regulator and recognised as a world leader in its field. Our activities are diverse, enabling the aviation industry to meet the highest safety standards, and we pride ourselves on our ability to adapt to the constantly evolving aviation environment.

We are looking for an experienced hands-on Technical Architect or Systems design focused Principal Engineer to provide technical leadership across a portfolio of digital services.

This is a role that combines architecture,engineering,and delivery. You will work closely with software engineering teams, product managers, securityspecialists,and operational teams to design secure,reliable,and maintainable services that support the CAA's regulatory responsibilities.

You will help shape technical direction across our Next.js, .NET and Azure estate whilstremainingactively involved in delivery. The role will be approximately 70% architecture,design,and technical leadership and 30% hands-on engineering, although this will vary depending on delivery priorities and the complexity of the work.

• Define andmaintainarchitecture principles,standards,and patterns across multiple CAA digital services.
• Produce solution designs and technical guidance that support secure, accessible,resilient,and supportable services.
• Work with Engineering leads, Product, and delivery teams toidentifytechnical risks,dependencies,and opportunities early, balancing business priorities, technical debt, securityrequirementsand operational needs to develop a pragmatic technical roadmap.
• Lead technical and architecturespikesand proof of concepts where complex or high-risk decisions require validation.
  
  Support hands on prototyping of novel technical solutions to validate approaches before rollout.
• Review solution designs,code,and technical approaches to improve consistency and quality across teams, and work alongside developers to resolve complex engineering problems.
• Promote automation, modern engineering practices,and appropriate useof AI-assisted tooling within agreed CAA security, information management,and governance controls.

• Work with product, engineering, architecture, security,data,and operational teams to translate business requirements into elegant, scalable technical solutions. Communicate decisions,risks,and trade-offs clearly to technical and non-technical colleagues.
• Coach and mentor software engineers, helping develop software architecture, system design,and engineering capability across teams.
  
  Help engineers to grow and solve engineering blockers.

• 5+ years of experience designing and delivering enterprise level cloud-based web applications and services, gained as a hands-on Technical Architect, Principal Engineer, Lead Engineer or in a similar senior technical role.
• Able to communicate complex technical issues clearly through concise documentation,diagrams,and constructive conversations with technical and non-technical colleagues.
• Technical skills and experience:
• Experience with React, Next.js including server-siderenderingand web performance.
• Experience designing and building APIs, integrations and backend services…