Principal Software Engineer

We’re looking for a Principal Engineer to help shape the future of engineering at PEXA UK. In this technical leader role you will work closely with the UK CTO and engineering leadership team to define technical strategy, drive architectural decisions, champion innovation, and build the engineering capabilities that support our next phase of growth.

• Define and execute engineering strategy across multiple teams and domains.
• Drive architectural decisions that balance business priorities, scalability, security and long‑term sustainability.
• Design solutions that support future growth and evolving customer needs.
• Identify and address technical risks across the organisation.

• Establish and evolve engineering standards, best practices and quality frameworks.
• Drive improvements in performance, reliability, security and developer productivity.
• Champion modern software engineering principles and continuous improvement.
• Support the evolution of platform, infrastructure and service architecture.

• Lead the evaluation and adoption of emerging technologies and AI capabilities.
• Drive the integration of AI tools and practices that enhance engineering effectiveness.
• Explore and implement modern AI‑powered development workflows, coding assistants and agentic systems.
• Help shape PEXA’s approach to AI innovation and organisational adoption.

• Mentor and coach engineers across all levels, from emerging talent to senior technical leaders.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, curiosity and continuous learning.
• Lead technical discussions, knowledge‑sharing initiatives and engineering communities of practice.
• Contribute to hiring and technical assessment processes.

• Partner with Product, Design and Business leaders to align technical strategy with organisational goals.
• Translate business objectives into technical roadmaps and engineering outcomes.
• Influence decision‑making at executive level through clear communication and technical insight.
• Represent PEXA externally within the technology community and industry forums.

You’ll bring significant experience designing and delivering large‑scale distributed systems, a track record of defining technical strategy and driving organisation‑wide engineering outcomes, and strong experience working across multiple teams, platforms and stakeholders. You have a proven ability to balance technical excellence with commercial priorities and communicate effectively at all levels of the organisation.

• Node.js, Python and Kotlin
• Modern frontend technologies
• Cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure
• Microservices and distributed architectures
• Containerisation and cloud‑native development
• Security architecture and secure software development practices
• Performance, scalability and reliability engineering

Strong interest in the evolving AI landscape, including AI‑assisted software development tools, agentic AI frameworks and modern approaches to context engineering and AI‑enhanced developer productivity.

• Experience with in financial services, property technology or other regulated industries.
• Exposure to Dev Sec Ops , Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) or Platform Engineering environments.
• Knowledge of AI frameworks and technologies such as Anthropic Claude, Lang Graph, Hugging Face, LiteLLM or Pydantic AI.

£100,000 - £120,000 a year

• Annual Leave: 25 days per year (increasing to 27 days after 5 years), plus Bank Holidays.
• Annual Leave Purchase:
  Option to purchase up to 1 working week of additional leave.
• Wellness Days: 4 paid days per year to rest and recharge.
• Paid Volunteer Day: 1 paid day per year to volunteer at a charity of your choice.
• Pension scheme (Aviva): 6% employer contribution, 4% employee contribution.
• Life Assurance: 4× basic salary.
• Health Flex Pot via Benifex: £800 flexible benefit to spend on health options of your choice.
• Additional Benifex perks: voluntary opt‑in for benefits such as Activity Pass, Perkbox discounts, Beauty and Fitness Discount Card, Cycle to Work, Motor Breakdown, Will Writing, or enhanced coverage of benefits provided by the company.
• Critical Illness Cover: 1× basic salary.
• Group‑wide Equity Plan:
  Eligibility for participation in the group‑wide employee share plan, subject to annual invitation.
• Enhanced Maternity/Adoption Pay:
  Up to 20 weeks full pay.
• Enhanced Paternity Pay:
  Up to 4 weeks full pay.
• Performance‑based Incentive Scheme:
  Eligibility for a discretionary Short Term Incentive plan, based on job role and level.
• Learning & Development:
  Access to Linked In Learning and reimbursement of professional membership costs.
• Additional employee assistance programme and wellbeing resources, eye‑test vouchers and VDU glasses contribution.
• Office Space:
  Use of PEXA office work spaces in Leeds and Thame.