Hands-On Principal Software Engineer - Belfast Hybrid

Vanrath; Belfast City District; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Hybrid working Belfast

Extra annual leave

Private medical insurance

Company pension

Life assurance

Autonomy and ownership

Architecture/engineering strategy

Modern software practices

Job summary

Vanrath in Belfast is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to own technical direction while remaining hands-on with development. You will influence architecture, engineering practices, and platform reliability in a growing technology organisation.

You will work with experienced engineers and leadership to shape standards, deliver complex software, and mentor others. This senior role offers autonomy and significant technical influence within a hybrid Belfast environment.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in software engineering with leadership or architectural ownership.
• Hands-on with TDD, DDD and XP practices.
• Experience delivering continuous delivery and trunk-based development.
• Track record building and maintaining complex production systems.
• Knowledge of observability, incident management and reliability.
• Mentoring engineers and influencing standards across teams.

Responsibilities

• Leading architectural decisions and defining technical standards across software systems.
• Designing and developing scalable, reliable and maintainable applications.
• Championing Test-Driven Development (TDD), Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and modern engineering practices.
• Improving CI/CD pipelines, release processes and deployment strategies.
• Working with engineers to improve system performance, reliability and observability.
• Establishing coding standards, testing strategies and approaches to technical debt.
• Supporting the adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools and practices.
• Mentoring senior engineers and contributing to wider technical decisions.
• Collaborating with engineering leadership to improve software delivery across teams.

Skills

Architectural ownership

TDD/DDD/XP

CD/CI

Observability

Mentoring

Leadership

Job description

Vanrath in Belfast is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to own technical direction while remaining hands-on with development. You will influence architecture, engineering practices, and platform reliability in a growing technology organisation.

You will work with experienced engineers and leadership to shape standards, deliver complex software, and mentor others. This senior role offers autonomy and significant technical influence within a hybrid Belfast environment.