Senior Principal Software Engineer Java

Senior Principal Software Engineer Java Overview

This role is for a senior-level principal engineer focused on Java-based platform development in Manchester, where the work centers on building and evolving the infrastructure behind enterprise-scale API gateways, edge routing, and developer productivity capabilities. The team supports a leading decision-making platform used by large global organizations, and the role calls for someone who can shape technical direction, deliver complex systems end to end, and help raise engineering standards across distributed teams.

What you will do

• Lead the architecture, design, and delivery of platform capabilities that power enterprise API gateways, edge routing, and tools that accelerate developer workflows.
• Build and scale backend services that handle high volumes of traffic, including request orchestration, tenant isolation, and API-first functionality used by thousands of tenants and tens of thousands of users.
• Work with architects and senior engineers across the Platform Experience area to define technical direction and align implementation patterns for major initiatives such as vanity URL support, JWT authentication flows, and cross-service proxying.
• Help evolve deployment and release infrastructure by promoting modern GitOps practices, including ArgoCD and Helm, together with highly available container orchestration.
• Own important platform features from design through production operation, with ongoing attention to observability, smart rate limiting, and difficult concurrency problems such as database locking and connection starvation.
• Provide strong technical leadership in Java and Kotlin, including work that connects backend microservices with UI components and addresses complex CORS and distributed edge proxy needs.
• Mentor engineers across global teams through design reviews, pair programming, and direct hands-on support to strengthen the engineering culture and improve team resilience.
• Contribute high-quality code and technical thinking that helps the organization deliver reliable, scalable, and maintainable platform services.

What the company is looking for

• Substantial software engineering experience in enterprise environments, especially in high-throughput platform systems or data-heavy products.
• Strong familiarity with modern AI tools and concepts, including agentic programming patterns and LLM-assisted workflows, and the ability to use them to improve platform engineering speed and developer productivity.
• Deep backend expertise in JVM languages, especially Java and/or Kotlin, plus a strong understanding of distributed systems internals.
• A proven record of building API-first infrastructure, API gateways such as Traefik, and edge routing solutions that remain dependable under sustained load of 2,000+ requests per second.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, containerized deployments, and sophisticated CI/CD pipelines, with solid knowledge of GitOps, ArgoCD, and rapid release workflows.
• Good understanding of event-driven architecture, real-time data processing, and managing complex database transaction scopes at scale.
• The ability to balance fast experimentation and iteration with long-term sustainability and quality, with a bias toward action rather than waiting for perfect information.
• Excellent communication skills and a track record of turning complex ideas into clear RFCs and architecture documents that help globally distributed teams align.
• Comfort working across time zones and collaborating effectively with distributed engineering groups.
• Preferred experience shaping architecture and platform strategy at enterprise scale, including trade-offs between hybrid and cloud-agnostic infrastructure.
• Preferred broad technical curiosity and a polyglot mindset, with comfort using the best tool for the job and exploring technologies such as React, Python, or Go when useful.
• Preferred enthusiasm for learning new technologies and approaches to solve edge-routing and platform-enablement problems.
• Preferred mentoring mindset and a collaborative style that helps improve engineering culture without ego.
• Preferred ease with asynchronous collaboration and consensus-building across multiple domains.

Team and culture

The organization describes itself as a group of innovators focused on improving business decision-making through an AI-infused scenario planning and analysis platform. The company emphasizes a winning culture built around customer success, ambitious goals, leadership at every level, and celebrating achievements of all sizes. It also highlights a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and says that people are valued for their individuality and authentic selves.

The platform serves many well-known global enterprises, including major Fortune 50 companies, and the role sits within a team that works on core platform experience and infrastructure capabilities. The environment is described as strategy-led, values-based, and disciplined in execution, with an expectation that engineers will be inspired, connected, developed, and rewarded.

Additional information

The company states that it supports reasonable accommodations for candidates and employees with disabilities during the application process, interviews, essential job functions, and access to employment benefits and privileges. It also warns applicants about fraudulent recruitment activity and explains that genuine offers go through a full interview process, are not sent by email as offers, and come from official company email addresses.

How to apply

Applications are submitted through the online Greenhouse application form. Candidates are asked to provide standard details such as contact information, a resume or CV, LinkedIn profile, and answers to eligibility questions, including whether they are legally authorized to work in the country where the role is based and whether they now or in the future will need visa sponsorship.

Degree Requirement: Not Specified

Visa Sponsorship May be