Principal Engineer

SundaySky; York and North Yorkshire; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

SundaySky seeks a Principal Engineer to provide hands‑on technical leadership across its product and platform. This senior IC will turn ambiguous goals into durable architecture, lead cross-platform initiatives, and improve how engineering designs and delivers software.

You will stay close to code while guiding video creation, personalization, rendering, data, AI, distribution, and platform services that support them, shaping scalable, secure systems for a multi-tenant SaaS platform.

Qualifications

• Approximately 12+ years in professional software development with SaaS leadership.
• Experience leading architecture across multi-team environments.
• Strong product thinking and ability to communicate complex decisions.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the technical architecture for SundaySky’s multi-tenant SaaS platform.
• Lead architecture and implementation across teams without formal reporting lines.
• Prototype critical paths, review high-impact changes, and resolve hard engineering problems.

Skills

Full-stack expertise

Distributed systems

Architecture leadership

React frontend

Node.js/Python/Java/C#

AWS / cloud

CI/CD / DevOps

Technical mentorship

Job description

• We are seeking a Principal Engineer to provide hands‑on technical leadership across SundaySky’s product and platform
• This is a senior individual‑contributor role for an engineer who can turn ambiguous business and product goals into durable architecture, lead the most complex cross‑platform initiatives, and materially improve how the engineering organization designs and delivers software
• This person will remain close to the code while setting direction across video creation, personalization, rendering, data, AI, distribution, and the shared platform capabilities that support them
• Define and evolve the technical architecture for SundaySky’s multi‑tenant SaaS platform across frontend applications, backend services, data systems, media pipelines, integrations, and cloud infrastructure
• Lead the technical strategy and design for the company’s highest‑risk, most ambiguous, and most cross‑cutting product and platform initiatives
• Translate business strategy, product requirements, and customer needs into scalable technical capabilities, sequenced investments, and executable implementation plans
• Serve as a hands‑on technical leader by prototyping critical paths, contributing production code, reviewing high‑impact changes, and resolving the hardest engineering problems
• Establish clear architectural principles, service boundaries, integration patterns, data contracts, and decision records that enable teams to move quickly without creating unnecessary complexity
• Drive modernization of established platform components while preserving business continuity and the delivery of new customer value
• Identify and address systemic risks involving scalability, performance, reliability, availability, security, privacy, operability, and maintainability
• Guide the architecture of video creation, real‑time and batch rendering, personalization, animation, media processing, asset management, analytics, and distribution capabilities
• Shape the responsible use of generative AI, large language models, synthetic media, and AI‑assisted engineering tools across the product and development lifecycle
• Partner with Product and UX to evaluate solution options, expose constraints early, and balance customer value, delivery speed, platform leverage, and long‑term technical health
• Partner with Engineering leadership, DevOps, QA, and Security to improve system design, delivery practices, production readiness, and operational resilience
• Lead technical discovery, architecture reviews, design reviews, and cross‑team alignment for major initiatives
• Create leverage through shared frameworks, reusable components, platform services, automation, developer tooling, and well‑defined engineering standards
• Raise the quality of technical decision‑making through rigorous code reviews, design feedback, mentoring, pairing, and clear written communication
• Coach senior and mid‑level engineers, develop emerging technical leaders, and help teams independently make sound architectural decisions
• Improve observability, capacity planning, incident response, root‑cause analysis, and the elimination of recurring production issues
• Evaluate new technologies and external platforms through focused experimentation, evidence‑based tradeoffs, and clear adoption recommendations
• Communicate technical strategy, architectural decisions, risks, and tradeoffs effectively to both engineering and non‑technical stakeholders

The ideal candidate combines deep full‑stack and distributed‑systems expertise with pragmatic judgment, strong product thinking, and the ability to influence through technical credibilityExperience designing enterprise integrations involving third‑party APIs, identity providers, data platforms, webhooks, file exchange, and event‑based interfacesDeep expertise in distributed systems, service architecture, APIs, asynchronous workflows, event‑driven patterns, background processing, and failure handlingExperience establishing CI/CD, infrastructure‑as‑code, automated testing, observability, and production‑operability practices for distributed applicationsExpert full‑stack engineering capability, with deep experience in modern JavaScript and TypeScript and strong proficiency in at least one backend technology such as Node.js, Python, Java, or C#Experience designing for scalability, resilience, high availability, graceful degradation, disaster recovery, and measurable service‑level objectivesDeep understanding of cloud‑native architecture, preferably AWS, including containers, serverless services, networking, storage, compute, deployment patterns, and cost managementDemonstrated ability to lead architecture and implementation across multiple teams without relying on formal reporting authorityStrong knowledge of application and platform security, authentication, authorization, tenant isolation, secrets management, data protection, privacy, and secure software developmentDemonstrated ability to modernize a mature platform incrementally while continuing to deliver product capabilities and protect customer commitmentsStrong experience with relational and non‑relational data architecture, schema design, data integrity, migration strategies, and performance optimizationApproximately 12 or more years of professional software development experience, including significant technical leadership in production SaaS environmentsA sustained record of designing, building, and operating complex, business‑critical software platforms at scaleStrong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical decisions, tradeoffs, and risks to varied audiencesAdvanced experience with modern frontend architecture, preferably React, including component systems, state management, performance, accessibility, browser behavior, and complex workflow‑oriented applicationsExperience with AWS or another major cloud providerExperience working on a multi‑tenant SaaS platformDemonstrate accountability for the health, evolution, and business impact of the platform as a wholePersonally solve the highest‑leverage technical problems while enabling others to execute the broader solutionBuild alignment across teams, resolve technical disagreements constructively, and influence decisions through evidence and credibilitySet coherent technical direction across multiple products, teams, and planning horizonsA successful Principal Engineer should be able to:Recognize systemic risks and architectural constraints before they become delivery or production failuresRaise engineering quality and delivery confidence without becoming a bottleneck or centralizing every decisionMake consequential technical decisions with incomplete information and clearly articulate the assumptions and tradeoffs involvedBalance immediate business needs with scalability, reliability, security, maintainability, and long‑term platform evolutionConvert ambiguous strategic goals into clear architecture, technical milestones, ownership boundaries, and delivery pathsCreate durable organizational leverage through platforms, standards, tools, documentation, and stronger technical leadersExperience with video, audio, media processing, creative tooling, animation, rendering, transcoding, or digital asset managementExperience with browser‑based motion graphics using React, JavaScript, CSS animations, Canvas, WebGL, WebAssembly, or related technologiesExperience with generative AI, large language models, retrieval‑augmented generation, agentic workflows, prompt orchestration, or AI‑generated mediaExperience architecting configurable enterprise platforms and internal developer platforms with reusable services, fine‑grained permissions, approval workflows, auditability, and governance controlsExperience with high‑throughput job orchestration, message queues, event buses, streaming systems, or distributed rendering workloadsExperience with enterprise data connectivity, CRM or customer‑data platforms, personalized content systems, or customers in regulated industries such as banking, financial services, and insuranceExperience with PostgreSQLExperience with automated browser testing frameworksExperience with event‑driven systems, background jobs, message queues, or asynchronous processingExperience integrating third‑party applications or servicesExperience in an Agile or iterative product‑development environment