Principal Engineer, Digital Assistant

NatWest Group; City of Edinburgh; Remote; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A major banking institution is hiring a Principal Engineer to lead the development of software components. This role involves designing high-performance applications and managing engineering teams. A strong background in microservices, programming best practices, and experience with CI/CD pipelines, cloud platforms, and leading teams are essential. The position allows for growth in both technical and leadership skills, offering a remote-first working style.

Qualifications

• Significant experience developing software within an SOA or microservices paradigm.
• Experience leading software development teams and executing technical strategies.
• Excellent understanding of programming best practices around scalability and performance.

Responsibilities

• Drive development of software and tools to meet project objectives.
• Design and develop high performance applications using proven frameworks.
• Manage technical delivery of software engineering teams.
• Write unit and integration tests to ensure code quality.

Skills

Software engineering

Microservices

Leading development teams

CI/CD pipelines

Cloud platforms (AWS, IBM Cloud)

Tools

Python

NodeJS

Industry recognised frameworks

Job description

Join us as a Principal Engineer, Digital Assistant

• This is an exciting and challenging opportunity to work in a collaborative, agile and forward thinking team environment
• With your software development background, you’ll be delivering software components to enable the delivery of platforms, applications and services for the bank
• As well as developing your technical talents, you'll have the opportunity to build project and leadership skills which will open up a range of exciting career options

What you’ll do

As a Principal Engineer, you’ll be driving development software and tools to accomplish project and departmental objectives by converting functional and non-functional requirements into suitable designs. You’ll play a leading role in planning, developing and deploying high performance robust and resilient systems for the bank, and will develop your leadership skills as you manage the technical delivery of one or more software engineering teams.

You’ll also gain a distinguished leadership status in the software engineering community as you lead the wider participation in internal and industry wide events, conferences and other activities.

You’ll also be:

• Designing and developing high performance and high availability applications, using proven frameworks and technologies
• Making sure that the bank’s systems follow excellent architectural and engineering principles, and are fit for purpose
• Monitoring the technical progress against plans while safeguarding functionality, scalability and performance, and providing progress updates to stakeholders
• Designing and developing reusable libraries and APIs for use across the bank
• Writing unit and integration tests within automated test environments to ensure code quality

The skills you’ll need

You’ll come with a background in software engineering, software or database design and architecture, as well as significant experience developing software within an SOA or microservices paradigm.

Along with development experience in one or more programming languages, you’ll bring an excellent understanding of implementing programming best practice, especially around scalability, availability and performance.

You’ll also need:

• Experience of leading software development teams whilst introducing and executing technical strategies
• The ability to use industry recognised frameworks and development tooling
• Knowledge and proficiency in designing full stack software and architecture solutions, preferable Chat or AI based
• Experience in CI/CD pipelines, hosting on prem and cloud platforms including AWS and IBM Cloud
• Experience of supporting, modifying and maintaining systems and code developed by teams other than your own using Python and NodeJS

Hours 35

Job Posting Closing Date: 08/12/2025

Ways of Working: Remote First