Principal Engineer

Kaluza; West of England; Hybrid; GBP 95,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension Scheme

Discretionary Bonus Scheme

Private Medical Insurance + Virtual GP

Life Assurance

Home Office Budget

Free Mortgage Advice and Eye Tests

Progressive Leave Policy

Personal Learning Budget

Job summary

Kaluza is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to act as the leading technical authority for a major global product area, spanning multiple modules. You will drive innovation on complex, large-scale solutions and ensure alignment with architecture standards across teams.

You will influence product roadmaps, mentor engineers, and contribute to code-level design as needed, while maintaining a strong independence and growth mindset.

Qualifications

• Architect modern distributed, cloud-based systems applying modern architecture and engineering practices in an enterprise software environment.
• Shape and influence technical vision and product roadmaps to align with business goals.
• Provide hands‑on leadership, making appropriate technical choices to satisfy requirements.
• Mentor and guide engineers in delivering autonomous, loosely coupled distributed systems with proven architectural principles and patterns.
• Lead technical due diligence and make high‑stakes decisions with confidence.

Responsibilities

• Act as the leading technical authority for a major global product area comprising multiple modules.
• Drive innovation on complex, large-scale solutions and ensure alignment with target architecture standards.
• Enable multiple teams and act as a strategic partner to architecture leadership and senior engineers.
• Occasionally contribute to code-level design or proof-of-concept for challenging problems.

Skills

Architectural leadership

Technical vision shaping

Hands-on leadership

Mentorship

Technical due diligence

Cross-team influence

Stakeholder engagement

Independent working

Tools

AWS

API design

CI/CD tooling

Job description

• Job title: Principal Engineer
• Location: London / Bristol / Edinburgh (Hybrid Office - 3+ days per week)
• Team: Enterprise Architecture
• Level: TL2 / TL3

This role is based in London, Bristol or Edinburgh and requires existing right to work in the UK.

At this time, we are not able to offer visa sponsorship for this role. We are committed to building a diverse, global team and our sponsorship policy is evaluated on a role-by-role basis. We encourage you to keep an eye on our careers site to stay informed about future opportunities where we are able to offer visa sponsorship.

Kaluza is the Energy Intelligence Platform, turning energy complexity into seamless coordination. We help energy companies overcome today’s challenges while accelerating the shift to a clean, electrified future.

Our platform orchestrates millions of real-time decisions across homes, devices, markets and grids. By combining predictive algorithms with human-centred design, Kaluza makes clean energy dependable, affordable and adaptive to everyday life.

With teams across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, and a joint venture with Mitsubishi Corporation in Japan, we power leading companies including OVO, AGL and ENGIE, as well as innovators like Volvo and Volkswagen.

What will I be doing?

As a Principal Software Engineer at Kaluza, you will be the leading technical authority for a major global product area comprising multiple modules. You will lead innovation on some of the most complex, ambiguous, and large-scale solutions, aligning them with target architecture standards and contributing to the creation of a scalable platform.

You’ll have a broad sphere of influence, enabling multiple teams and serving as a strategic partner to our architecture leadership team and our community of principal and staff engineers.

Your impact will come mostly from 'hands-off' work; you’ll not be expected to write code day-to-day. But for some challenges, you may need to dive into code-level design or help build a proof-of-concept.

About You

Ideally you’ll have/be

• Architect modern distributed, cloud-based systems applying modern architecture and engineering practices in an enterprise software environment.


• Shape and influence technical vision and product roadmaps to align with business goals.


• Provide hands‑on leadership, making appropriate technical choices to satisfy requirements.


• Mentor and guide engineers in delivering autonomous, loosely coupled distributed systems with proven architectural principles and patterns.


• Lead technical due diligence and make high‑stakes decisions with confidence.


• Deliver results, influence diverse audiences, and orchestrate cross‑functional solutions spanning multiple product features.


• Engage effectively with both technical teams and executive leaders.


• Work independently and collaboratively, bringing strong opinions while respecting others, communicating openly, and maintaining self‑awareness with a continuous growth mindset.

What will set you apart

• Experience enabling engineering teams to use AI and delivering AI/ML powered solutions.


• Demonstrable experience in architecting solutions in complex business domains, particularly interface design and data modelling, ideally with experience in AWS and API design.


• Proven track record delivering global B2B2C SaaS (energy or other mission‑critical industries).


• Success driving adoption of modern engineering practices (e.g. DevOps, CI/CD).


• Experience leading teams through significant changes in ways of working.


• Ability to ramp up rapidly in new domains and technologies.

Where you'll work

We offer flexible working, with an expectation of 3 days a week in the office. This gives us the best of both: real time together to collaborate and build relationships, with the flexibility to work in the way that suits you best the rest of the week.

Kaluza Values

Here at Kaluza we have five core values that guide us as a business: Play to win, Solve the real problem, Build trust every day, Own the outcome, Go further together.

Our Perks

• Pension Scheme


• Discretionary Bonus Scheme


• Private Medical Insurance + Virtual GP


• Life Assurance


• Access to Furthr - a Climate Action app


• Free Mortgage Advice and Eye Tests


• Perks at Work - access to thousands of retail discounts


• 5% Flex Fund - to spend on the benefits you want most


• 26 days holiday


• Progressive Leave Policy - With no qualifying service periods, including 26 weeks full pay if you have a new addition to your family


• Personal Learning Budget - Upskill, learn and grow!


• Home Office Budget
  And more!

We want the best people

We’re keen to meet people from all walks of life — our view is that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We want to build teams which represent a variety of experiences, perspectives and skills, and we recognise talent on the basis of merit and potential.

We understand some people may not apply for jobs unless they tick every box. But if you're excited about joining us and think you have some of what we're looking for, even if you're not 100% sure, we'd still love to hear from you.

Find out more about working in Kaluza on our careers page and LinkedIn.