Principal Engineer

Lorien; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 92,000 - 148,000; Full time

Job summary

Lorien is seeking a Principal Engineer for a major technology transformation programme on a 6-9 month contract. The role is senior and hands‑on, shaping engineering strategy while delivering scalable, secure solutions in a large enterprise environment.

You will lead engineering across multiple workstreams, drive modern practices, automation, and software quality, and collaborate with architects, product, and engineering teams.

Qualifications

• Senior hands‑on technical leader with proven design and delivery of scalable, resilient solutions.
• Lead enterprise Java microservices across multiple workstreams and teams.
• Hands‑on in modern engineering practices, automation, and software quality.
• Experience delivering event‑driven architectures using Kafka and data platforms.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of enterprise‑scale Java microservices and distributed systems.
• Drive automation, simplification, resilience, security, scalability and performance.
• Champion modern DevOps, CI/CD practices and software quality across delivery teams.
• Design APIs and event‑driven patterns using Kafka and integrate with Snowflake.

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

Microservices

Kafka

REST APIs

PostgreSQL

Snowflake

DevOps

CI/CD

TDD

Agile

StreamSets

Tools

IBM StreamSets

Job description

London or Edinburgh | Hybrid Working (2 Days Per Week On-Site) | 6-9 Month Contract | Competitive Daily Rate

We're currently seeking an experienced Principal Engineer to join a major technology transformation programme on an initial 6-9 month contract. This is a senior-level opportunity for a hands‑on technical leader with a proven track record of designing and delivering scalable, resilient, and high‑performing solutions within complex enterprise environments.

Working alongside architecture, product, and engineering teams, you'll provide technical leadership across multiple workstreams, helping shape engineering strategy while remaining close to solution design and delivery. You'll play a key role in driving modern engineering practices, automation, and software quality across a large‑scale platform landscape.

• Spring Boot
• REST APIs
• Kafka
• Snowflake
• IBM StreamSets

The Role

As a Principal Engineer, you'll create great customer outcomes through the design and delivery of innovative, secure, and scalable technology solutions. You'll provide technical direction, influence engineering strategy, and ensure best practice is embedded throughout the software development lifecycle.

You'll work closely with software engineers, architects, and stakeholders to define and govern technical solutions whilst supporting the successful delivery of key business initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of enterprise‑scale Java microservices and distributed systems.
• Define, create, and govern engineering solutions focused on automation, simplification, resilience, security, scalability, and performance.
• Drive the adoption of modern software engineering practices, DevOps principles, and CI/CD automation.
• Design and develop APIs, event‑driven solutions, and integration patterns using Kafka.
• Collaborate with domain and enterprise architects to align solutions with broader strategic objectives.
• Develop architecture roadmaps and technical blueprints that support future business growth.
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance across engineering teams.
• Support engineering governance, design reviews, and technical decision‑making.
• Ensure solutions are operationally robust, highly available, secure, and maintainable.
• Extensive hands‑on experience with Java 8+, Spring Boot, and modern microservices architectures.
• Strong expertise designing and delivering event‑driven systems using Kafka.
• Experience working with PostgreSQL and enterprise‑scale database solutions.
• Proven experience implementing and integrating with Snowflake data platforms.
• Strong background in designing and developing RESTful APIs and service‑based architectures.
• Significant experience operating within Agile and DevOps delivery environments.
• Deep understanding of software architecture, system design, scalability, resilience, and performance optimisation.
• Strong experience with Test-Driven Development (TDD), automated testing frameworks, unit testing, mocking, and stubbing.
• Experience working with source control, code repositories, CI/CD pipelines, defect management tools, and engineering collaboration platforms.

Leadership & Stakeholder Management

We're looking for someone who can provide both technical excellence and leadership.

You'll have:

• A proven track record leading engineering teams within large, complex, matrix organisations.
• Experience defining and executing engineering and technology strategies.
• The ability to translate business requirements into scalable, secure, and maintainable technical solutions.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Experience mentoring engineers and driving high‑performing engineering cultures.
• A passion for continuous improvement, engineering excellence, and innovation.