Principal Software Architect - Cloud Leader (Hybrid)

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

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

25 days holiday

Hybrid working

Pension up to 11%

Private medical insurance

Health care cash plans

Wellbeing support

Volunteer days

Bike facilities

Deli/coffee facilities

Job summary

Hargreaves Lansdown is seeking a Principal Software Engineer in Bristol on a hybrid basis. You’ll shape high-level architectures, set guardrails, and empower teams to deliver data-driven solutions with a focus on approachability and collaboration.

You will lead essential architectural decisions, guide AWS-based container strategies, and drive Observability, security, and best practices while coaching engineers towards excellence.

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

Leadership

Cloud-native design

Architectural influence

Communication

Decision making

Coaching teams

Documentation

Security & observability

Event-Driven Architecture

Tools

TypeScript

React

Node.js

Terraform

AWS

Kubernetes

ECS

Docker

Lambda

SQS

DocumentDB

Job description

Hargreaves Lansdown is seeking a Principal Software Engineer in Bristol on a hybrid basis. You’ll shape high-level architectures, set guardrails, and empower teams to deliver data-driven solutions with a focus on approachability and collaboration.

You will lead essential architectural decisions, guide AWS-based container strategies, and drive Observability, security, and best practices while coaching engineers towards excellence.