Principal Engineer - Enterprise Platform Leader (Hybrid)

UK Home Office; Salford; Hybrid; GBP 17,000 - 21,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Civil Service Pension

25 days annual leave

Flexible working options

Reward scheme

Job summary

The UK Home Office is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead engineering efforts across several teams, ensuring secure, scalable services and maintainable systems. You will line-manage Lead Engineers and align engineering work with strategic goals.

You will provide technical leadership, shape resourcing decisions for projects, and act as a central point of contact for engineers to uphold governance and secure-by-design principles across enterprise-scale platforms.

Qualifications

• Experience leading engineering for large-scale, secure, data-intensive services.
• Ability to define and assure software design standards and governance.
• Experience overseeing end-to-end systems across multiple teams and architectures.
• Proven track record driving automated testing, deployment pipelines, and observability.
• Experience managing risk, compliance, and secure handling of sensitive data.
• Experience coaching and mentoring to grow engineering capability.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and evolution of enterprise-scale NodeJS services to ensure performance and resilience.
• Define and assure software design standards and governance aligned to service standards.
• Oversee end-to-end delivery across multiple teams and architectures.
• Drive quality engineering practices with automated tests and CI/CD pipelines.
• Manage technical risk and ensure compliance with governance frameworks.
• Coach and mentor engineers and support workforce planning.

Skills

NodeJS

React

RESTful APIs

Microservices

CI/CD

Observability

Tools

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

Job description

The UK Home Office is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead engineering efforts across several teams, ensuring secure, scalable services and maintainable systems. You will line-manage Lead Engineers and align engineering work with strategic goals.

You will provide technical leadership, shape resourcing decisions for projects, and act as a central point of contact for engineers to uphold governance and secure-by-design principles across enterprise-scale platforms.