Principal Software Architect & Cloud Leader

Hargreaves Lansdown PLC; West of England; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

Holiday 25 days

Hybrid work

Pension 11%

Private medical insurance

Life insurance 4x salary

Health care plan

Wellness program

Volunteer days

Bike storage & showers

Job summary

Hargreaves Lansdown PLC in Bristol is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive the technology transformation and set high-level architectures. You will influence engineering teams, mentor developers, and shape data-driven, scalable solutions across the organisation.

The role requires strong leadership in modern patterns, cloud-native design, and container orchestration, with a focus on collaboration with Product and Engineering Managers. Hybrid working to Bristol office is offered.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated leadership in legacy technology transformation.
• Strong expertise in modern architectural patterns, cloud-native design and container orchestration.
• Skilled communicator able to influence and engage at every level of the organisation.
• Proven ability to balance trade-offs, costs and technical constraints.
• Experience coaching teams towards engineering and architecture best practices.
• Deep understanding of design patterns, security, networking, observability, and system flows.
• Adept at producing clear, concise architectural documentation.

Responsibilities

• Define and document high-level solution architectures, clearly outlining trade-offs, risks, and dependencies.
• Provide clear architectural principles and best-practice guidelines that empower teams to design excellent solutions.
• Foster a culture of data-driven decision-making, defining cross-team metrics that support continuous improvement.
• Promote strong documentation practices, including Architectural Decision Records, Solution Memos, and C4 diagrams.
• Guide cloud architecture choices, particularly around container orchestration and the use of AWS services.
• Champion best practices for observability, logging, security, and networking.
• Identify opportunities to enhance Developer Experience and efficiency through smarter tooling and frameworks.
• Support engineering teams with mentoring, pairing, and skills development.
• Lead conversations around Event-Driven Architecture, cost forecasting, and designing for the future state.
• Partner with Product and Engineering Managers to align priorities and delivery approaches.

Skills

Legacy technology leadership

Cloud-native design

Container orchestration

Architectural patterns

Communication

Coaching teams

Security and observability

System architecture documentation

Tools

Kubernetes

ECS

Docker

Lambda

SQS

DocumentDB

Terraform

AWS

Job description

Hargreaves Lansdown PLC in Bristol is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive the technology transformation and set high-level architectures. You will influence engineering teams, mentor developers, and shape data-driven, scalable solutions across the organisation.

The role requires strong leadership in modern patterns, cloud-native design, and container orchestration, with a focus on collaboration with Product and Engineering Managers. Hybrid working to Bristol office is offered.