Principal Software Engineer (Backend & Platform)

IC Resources; West of England; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

IC Resources and our Bristol-based client seek a Principal Software Engineer to lead the design, architecture and development of an internal developer platform used by all engineering teams. You will architect and own the tooling, infrastructure, workflows, and components that developers build on.

This role focuses on building a platform from the ground up for agentic engineering, including rolling out coding agents across engineering workflows and owning how and where they’re used.

Qualifications

• Experience as principal or staff software engineer.
• Expertise across multiple languages and tooling (Python, Go, Rust, AWS, Kubernetes).
• Hands-on in building developer platforms and internal tooling.
• Experience implementing agentic AI in real engineering workflows.
• Knowledge of guardrails: sandboxing, permissions, audit logging or observability.
• Deep CI/CD, IaC, containers and Kubernetes experience.
• Experience creating reproducible development environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, architecture and development of internal developer platform used by all engineering teams.
• Architect and own tooling, infrastructure, workflows and components.
• Drive implementation of agentic AI across engineering workflows and coding agents rollout.
• Define standards and technical direction for the platform.

Skills

Principal experience

CI/CD

Kubernetes

Development tooling

Python

Go

Rust

AWS

Tools

Python

Go

Rust

Kubernetes

AWS

Docker

Job description

Our client is a fast-growing UK engineering and software technology company located in Bristol.

They are looking to hire a Principal Software Engineer to lead the design, architecture and development of their internal developer platform that all their engineering teams will utilise and depend on.

You will architect and own the tooling, infrastructure, workflows, and components that their developers build on.

This will be a platform built from the ground up for agentic engineering- so you will lead the implementation of agentic AI and champion its use ie roll out coding agents across engineering workflows and own how and where they’re used.

Key Skills/experience Required

• Substantial experience as a principal or staff software engineer, with experience of utilising a range of languages/tools/frameworks (Python, Go, Rust, AWS, Kubernetes, etc)
• Demonstrable experience building developer platforms, internal tooling, and paved paths used by engineering teams.
• Hands-on experience implementing agentic AI in real engineering workflows (beyond individual experimentation).
• Experience designing the guardrails around agentic AI: sandboxing, permissioning, audit logging, or observability for tools operating with elevated access.
• Deep, hands-on experience of CI/CD, infrastructure as code, containers, and Kubernetes.
• Experience of building and deploying reproducible development environments.

Why consider it?

This is a genuinely hands-on Principal role with significant technical ownership where you can set technical direction and standards, to drive innovation.

The role is hybrid, with a minimum of 3 days per week onsite in Bristol, and candidates must be eligible for UK SC clearance.