Principal Software Engineer

# Principal Software Engineer Rocket Software Full-time Newbury, United Kingdom0 views

Posted June 5, 2026##

Job Description It's fun to work in a company where people truly BELIEVE in what they're doing!

Job Description

Summary:

The Infrastructure Modernization business unit is seeking a highly experienced Principal Software Engineer to join our engineering organization and provide deep technical leadership across our
** COBOL
* * development ecosystem and our Enterprise Server application replatforming products. This is a hands-on, strategic role focused on designing, building, and evolving mission‐critical infrastructure used by global enterprises running high‐volume, high‐reliability  this role, you will influence architecture across multiple product lines, guide engineering best practices, and help define the future of our platform as customers modernize decades‐old workloads into more agile, distributed and environments.

You will partner closely with senior engineering leaders, product managers, and domain experts to drive innovation t You’ll Do Technical Leadership Architect, design, and implement core components within our
** COBOL
* * development tools, runtime environments, and mainframe replatforming infrastructure.

Provide technical direction across multiple engineering teams building compilers, runtimes, middleware, and large-scale distributed systems.

Drive modernization strategies for legacy application ecosystems, including
** cloud
* * migration, workload transformation, and hybrid deployment scenarios.

Hands-On Engineering Own complex technical domains end-to-end, from design through production, balancing long‐term architecture with immediate product needs.

Build highly reliable, scalable, and secure infrastructure software used in mission‐critical enterprise environments.

Conduct deep code reviews, troubleshoot production issues, and mentor engineers in system-level design and performance optimization.

Cross-Functional Impact Collaborate with product management to shape roadmap priorities and translate customer challenges into technical solutions.

Work with System Test, Dev Ops, and release engineering to ensure high-quality, low‐risk releases across a diverse product portfolio.

Introduce and champion engineering excellence practices, including automated testing, performance benchmarking, observability, and maintainability.

What We’re Looking For Required Experience
10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including leadership over complex, multi‐team technical initiatives.

Deep expertise in systems-level software development, such as compilers, runtimes, operating systems, or infrastructure‐level platforms.

Strong background in mission-critical, high‐availability software (e.g., financial services, telecom, government, or core enterprise platforms).Demonstrated experience with
** COBOL**, PL/I,
** C**, or
** C**++—or significant experience in other lower-level languages with a willingness to dive into
** COBOL
* * domain internals.

Proven track record building or modernizing enterprise-grade tooling, middleware, or distributed systems.

Ability to decompose legacy architectures, assess modernization paths, and design scalable solutions.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with mainframe-to
- ** cloud
* * migration, workload replatforming, or runtime compatibility layers.

Familiarity with Azure,
** AWS**, or hybrid
** cloud
* * architectures.

Understanding of static and dynamic language runtimes, compiler pipelines, and virtual machine internals.

Prior technical mentorship or architectural leadership spanning multiple scrum teams.

Strong diagnostic skills for debugging low-level performance, memory, concurrency, or runtime issues.

Who You AreA pragmatic engineer who balances ideal architecture with real-world constraints.

Passionate about long-term maintainability and operational excellence.

Comfortable working with legacy systems and excited about evolving them for the future.

A collaborator who elevates teams through mentorship and cross-functional alignment.

Someone who thrives in a technically rich, complex domain where your expertise has large-scale impact.

Why Join Us?

Influence the…