AI-Native Principal Software Engineer

The Citation Group; Wilmslow; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

The Citation Group in Wilmslow is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead hands-on delivery across backend, frontend, and infrastructure within a platform transformation.

You will partner with a Tech Lead to drive CI/CD, AI-native engineering, observability, and secure coding practices while raising engineering standards.

This hybrid role offers UK remote flexibility and an opportunity to shape systems that power our growth across the group.

Qualifications

• Solid experience delivering features on production systems.
• Full-stack capability across backend and frontend, with databases and cloud infra.
• Practical experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Working knowledge of cloud platforms (Azure/AWS) and containerisation (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Sound security fundamentals: secure coding, dependency management, and vulnerability awareness.
• Experience evolving systems, including refactoring and improving existing codebases.

Responsibilities

• Write production-quality code across the full stack end-to-end.
• Take ownership of features from design to deployment in shippable increments.
• Contribute to technical design and architecture discussions.
• Run spikes and proofs-of-concept to de-risk approaches.
• Manage technical debt responsibly and keep the codebase clean.
• Play active role in decomposing shared services into team-owned components.
• Support CI/CD adoption with pipelines, tests, and trunk-based development.
• Build with observability: instrumentation, logging, monitoring.
• Contribute to DevOps capabilities and operational ownership.
• Write clean, testable, secure code and uphold high standards.
• Practice test-driven development and use AI to scaffold tests and edge cases.
• Participate in code reviews and feedback loops.
• Apply secure coding practices.

Skills

Full-stack development

CI/CD

Automated testing

Infrastructure as code

Cloud platforms

Docker

Kubernetes

Security fundamentals

Refactoring

Tools

Azure

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

The Citation Group in Wilmslow is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead hands-on delivery across backend, frontend, and infrastructure within a platform transformation.

You will partner with a Tech Lead to drive CI/CD, AI-native engineering, observability, and secure coding practices while raising engineering standards.

This hybrid role offers UK remote flexibility and an opportunity to shape systems that power our growth across the group.