Principal Engineer; Backend

Position: Principal Engineer (Backend)
Our vision is to give everyone the belief they can make their move. We aim to make moving simpler, by giving everyone the best place to turn to and return to for access to the tools, expertise, trust, and belief to make it happen.

We’re home to the UK’s largest choice of properties and are the go-to destination for millions of people planning their next move, reading the latest industry news, or just browsing what’s on the market.

Location:

London office / Hybrid (2 days per week in the office)
Reporting to:
Head of Engineering Domain:
Consumer

The Role … Rightmove's consumer product-domain builds what most people picture when they think of Rightmove. Property search, listing pages, saved searches, maps, alerts, valuations. It gets an enormous amount of traffic, it's used at one of the most stressful moments in people's lives, and around 60 engineers work across it every day. We're hiring a Principal Engineer into this domain.

This is a senior, cross-domain role for someone who wants to drive impact across multiple teams, deepen our architectural thinking, and help us raise the bar on technical execution, product delivery, and long-term platform health. Your technical grounding is in Java and Spring Boot, and you're genuinely expert there. But you think and operate well beyond your specialism: across front-end, mobile, data, infrastructure, and delivery.

You're comfortable challenging assumptions at any layer of the stack, and you connect technical decisions to real user and business outcomes without needing to be prompted. You’ll bring a mix of deep technical expertise, strong product instincts, and collaborative leadership, acting as a trusted partner to engineering managers, product leads, and domain heads. ️Head to our tech blog to find out more about our engineering culture!

What you'll be doing… Engineering & Architecture Leadership Lead the design of systems that are scalable, resilient, and fit for purpose, particularly where complexity cuts across team boundaries. Shape the architectural direction of the consumer domain in alignment with our strategic goals. Identify areas where we can increase reuse, improve performance, or make smarter technology decisions. Delivery Impact Partner with Engineering and Product Managers to guide scoping, sequencing, and risk mitigation for large, high-value initiatives.

Unblock teams by spotting better ways forward, helping shift delivery patterns or simplifying complexity. Influence outcomes through strong product awareness and a focus on business and user value. Standards & Practices Champion engineering quality, from code structure and testing practices through to observability and operational readiness. Spot patterns and inefficiencies in how we build software, collaborate and help teams adopt better ways of working.

Influence how we think about platform services, shared capabilities, and long-term sustainability of our tech estate. Coaching & Influence Be a source of mentorship and thought partnership for senior engineers and tech leads. Model excellent communication, collaboration, and leadership behaviours across teams. Help us grow our internal technical community, supporting better knowledge sharing and cross-domain learning. What We’re Looking For...You don’t need to tick every box, but we’re looking for someone who:
Is already operating across multiple teams or domains and has a strong sense of the wider technical estate. Brings deep experience designing and delivering complex systems with significant business or user impact. Has a genuine interest in agentic and AI-driven development, and the practical judgement to help teams figure out where it genuinely adds value and where it doesn't. Communicates clearly, adapts to the audience, and helps bring people on the journey.

Thinks strategically, balancing technical concerns with product and organisational context. Regularly supports or mentors other engineers and is invested in growing our engineering culture. Knows how to move between high-level architecture and hands-on technical problem solving as needed. Is trusted by peers and stakeholders alike, known for their judgement, empathy, and…