Lead Principal Engineer — Enterprise-Scale Systems (Hybrid)

UK Home Office; Sheffield; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Civil Service Pension

25 days annual leave

In-year reward scheme

Flexi-time allowance

Job summary

UK Home Office is seeking a Principal Engineer who will lead engineering across multiple teams or a focused area, ensuring effective delivery and alignment with strategy. You will line-manage Lead Engineers and provide central technical leadership.

You will drive secure, scalable, data-intensive services, mentor engineers, and coordinate with project and programme management for resourcing and assurance activities.

Qualifications

• Leading engineering for large-scale, secure, data-intensive services.
• Defining and assuring software design standards and governance.
• Overseeing end-to-end systems across multiple teams.
• Driving quality engineering practices: testing, CI/CD, observability.
• Managing technical risk and compliance within governing frameworks.
• Coaching and mentoring to grow capability.

Responsibilities

• Take charge of engineering work across an ensemble of teams or a key area.
• Line manage or supervise multiple Lead Engineers as needed.
• Provide strategic insight to project management and assurance teams.
• Ensure systems are sustainable, maintainable and aligned with strategy.

Skills

NodeJS

React

REST APIs

Microservices

CI/CD

Observability

Security governance

Tools

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

Job description

UK Home Office is seeking a Principal Engineer who will lead engineering across multiple teams or a focused area, ensuring effective delivery and alignment with strategy. You will line-manage Lead Engineers and provide central technical leadership.

You will drive secure, scalable, data-intensive services, mentor engineers, and coordinate with project and programme management for resourcing and assurance activities.