Focus Principal Engineer

First Central Services UK Ltd; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

1st Central is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead technical architecture for Focus products, using .Net and Azure. You will translate high‑level designs into workable solutions and guide engineers across the value stream.

You’ll mentor engineers, uphold SOLID, drive observability and quality, and collaborate with Architecture and Product teams. Flexible hybrid working from Salford Quays (Manchester) with occasional in‑person sessions.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing and building end-to-end cloud-based software.
• Hands-on Azure and other cloud platforms with C# .NET.
• Experience migrating monolith on-prem to microservices on Azure.
• Knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes and serverless tech.
• Strong UML and software modelling skills.
• Experience in agile practices (Scrum or Kanban).

Responsibilities

• Create or guide technical architecture and low-level designs.
• Own proactive monitoring of products and services in your value stream.
• Support enterprise planning and ensure alignment to business outcomes.
• Ensure quality and governance of solutions, manage incidents and changes.
• Promote observability and test pipelines; ensure re-use and performance.
• Lead and mentor engineers; participate in on-call rotations.

Skills

Creative problem solving

People development

Resilience

Integrity

Proactive attitude

Prioritisation

Collaborative design

DevOps

Azure certification

Service‑oriented architecture

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Azure

Angular

SQL

CI/CD

Job description

At 1st Central, everything starts with our people. As one of the UK’s leading motor and home insurers, we use smart technology, data and great service to make insurance fast, fair and simple for over 1.4 million customers. We’re proud to create an environment where people feel supported, trusted and able to grow - whether that’s developing new skills, taking on fresh challenges or making a real impact every day. If you’re looking for a role where you can make a difference, we’d love to hear from you.

We’re looking for a Principal Engineer for this hands‑on technical role making use of .Net and Azure where you’ll be providing technical architecture leadership for a set of Focus technical products and services.

The role will involve taking responsibility for determining the Focus technical direction in collaboration with Architecture and ensuring alignment to the overall Focus architecture principles following SOLID principles for maintainability and scalability. You’ll collaborate with solution architecture to give clarity and technical direction to engineers who will build solutions against the agreed designs. Whilst not having any direct people management responsibilities, you’ll provide support, coaching and mentoring to Focus engineers to ensure they deliver to the required quality and integrity.

We’re big on flexible hybrid working. Our teams are based across Salford Quays (Manchester), Haywards Heath (West Sussex), and Guernsey. We primarily work from home but value collaboration, so we come together in person to keep ideas flowing, typically once a month. Prefer being in the office more often? That works for us too.

Core Skills

• A creative problem solver who thrives on creating simplicity out of complexity.
• A passion for people and creating environments that enable others to flourish.
• Resilient and comfortable prioritising in demanding situations.
• Highly trustworthy and able to operate with integrity and discretion at all times.
• Energetic and proactive, will enjoy motivating others with your “can do, will do” attitude.
• Able to operate with minimal brief, and a fast‑moving set of changing priorities.
• Ability to bring together multiple different views and perspectives to create agreed designs and solutions.
• Hands‑on experience in DevOps and/or Engineering roles.
• Beneficial - Azure certified.
• Beneficial - Other cloud platform certification.
• Good understanding of a service‑based approach to technology, including component, service oriented and event driven architectures.

What’s involved

You’ll be responsible for creating or guiding the technical architecture and low‑level design of technical solutions, taking high level solution and enterprise architecture artefacts and translating them into workable designs and work packages. You’ll drive forward and own the proactive monitoring of the products and services within your Value Stream. You’ll participate in Enterprise planning events to support the delivery and planning of change ensuring that the high‑level solution aligns to the business outcome. You’ll hold overall accountability for the technical product delivery for your Value Stream in adherence with our internal governance obligations and in line with the ‘Definition of Done’. You’ll be responsible for ensuring that speedy resolution of escalated priority incidents, problems and changes for all Products and services within your value stream including addressing follow up actions and improvements. You’ll be responsible for the quality of the overall Focus products, ensuring that solutions are implemented effectively from a re‑use and performance optimisation perspective. You’ll be responsible for coding standards and low‑level design for the Focus products that all engineers follow. You’ll be responsible for the design and build of observability and quality by design into all Focus pipelines, promoting self‑testing pipelines that proactively identify processing issues or discrepancies. You’ll carry out unit testing of own code, peer testing of others code to ensure appropriate quality, and will be responsible for completeness and integrity of solutions delivered on the Focus platform. You’ll support the release process across your value stream and Enterprise providing expert guidance to team members during this activity. With others you’ll be responsible for leading the SRE function within the value stream and participating in the on‑call rota to support, fix, resolve issues 365/24/7 and adhere to the requirement and responsibilities of the on‑call policy. You’ll take ownership for the creation of effective and appropriate architecture and design documents ensuring transparency and technical understanding for all Focus products. You’ll coach and mentor Lead and Software Engineers. You’ll comply with the requirements, and act in accordance with, the Group Code of Conduct and Fitness and Propriety policies at all times. You’ll ensure compliance with Company Policies, Values and guidelines and other relevant standards/ regulations at all times. You’ll collaborate effectively with Architects, Product Owners, Lead Developers and Senior Management to ensure fit for purpose solutions and service.

Experience & Knowledge

Requires extensive experience of designing and building end to end cloud based software solutions. Experience of using AI to power software engineering. Excellent understanding of design patterns used in high throughput and availability cloud‑based solutions. Professional hands‑on experience of Azure and other Cloud platforms. Experience of C# .Net including dependency injection entity framework and unit testing. Previously experience of migrating monolith on prem applications to microservices based azure platforms. Experience of designing applications on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) with an understanding of containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes) and serverless technologies. Working knowledge of UML, software modelling techniques, tools and languages in order to describe software and data in a standard format. Exceptional at building strong, effective relationships with people from different disciplines. Experience of carrying out technical design and build activities using agile working practices (such as Scrum or Kanban). Unit Testing – Experience in writing unit tests for pipelines. Azure Cloud – Knowledge and confidence in effective communication on Azure Cloud Subscriptions, Resource Groups, Subnet, VNet, Private Endpoints testing, Firewall rues management on Azure platform components. Working knowledge of full stack solutions from SPA (ideally in Angular) to SQL databases.

Skills & Qualifications

• A creative problem solver who thrives on creating simplicity out of complexity.
• A passion for people and creating environments that enable others to flourish.
• Resilient and comfortable prioritising in demanding situations.
• Highly trustworthy and able to operate with integrity and discretion at all times.
• Energetic and proactive, someone who motivates others by their “can do, will do” attitude.
• Able to operate with minimal brief, and a fast‑moving set of changing priorities.
• Ability to bring together multiple different views and perspectives to create agreed designs and solutions.
• Hands‑on experience in DevOps and/or Engineering roles.
• Beneficial - Azure certified.
• Beneficial - Other cloud platform certification.
• Beneficial - AI certified.
• Good understanding of a service‑based approach to technology, including component, service oriented and event driven architectures.

Behaviours

• A customer‑centric approach.
• Collaborate and partner with a variety of stakeholders.
• Ability to apply a product mindset.
• Self‑motivated and enthusiastic.
• An organised and proactive approach.
• Ability to work on one’s own initiative and as part of a wider team.
• Strives to drive business improvements to contribute to the success of the business.