Principal Software Engineer (Cloud), Retail Solutions

MARSH LLC.; Newcastle upon Tyne; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology firm in the United Kingdom is seeking an experienced Engineer to join their Application-Enablement team, focusing on SaaS product development. This hands-on role requires a strong foundation in software and cloud engineering, alongside the ability to collaborate with various product and platform teams. Candidates should have over 7 years of engineering experience, preferably with JavaScript and Python. The position entails leading service design and promoting best practices across engineering initiatives.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of engineering experience overall, with at least 2-3 years in a similar Principal SW Engineering or SW Architect roles.
• Experience designing and building distributed applications and architectures.
• Strong understanding of software engineering best practices such as version control, CI/CD, automated testing.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and operation of new services and functionality.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and cross-team collaboration across the Engineering organization.
• Champion best practices in cloud architectures to meet availability, performance, security, and cost efficiency.

Skills

Software engineering

Cloud engineering

Collaboration

Leadership

JavaScript

Python

Kubernetes

Terraform

MongoDB

PostgreSQL

Education

Relevant certifications (e.g., Azure's Solutions Architect)

Tools

Express.js

Vue

Flask

Pandas

argoCD

argo-workflows

Dapr

Job description

The Retail Solutions engineering teams build and operate our SaaS products, enabled by our cloud Platform. The combination of our Platform together with common services, patterns and approaches, unlocks our ability to innovate and build new products and functionality, ultimately increasing our value proposition. We are looking for an experienced Engineer to join our Application-Enablement team, serving as the bridge between our SaaS product engineering and our Platform teams. This team leads some of our most innovative and cutting-edge work such as the extraction of new common services and/or the creation of new products. This is a hands‑on role that requires a strong SW engineering and cloud engineering foundation. The role will also require solid collaboration and leadership skills. You will collaborate with our product teams as well as our Platform team, facilitating the work on initiatives that involve multiple of these teams. And since the Application-Enablement team will often spearhead the adoption of new patterns, strategies and platform functionality, you will also have the leadership and organizational skills to see these adopted across our Engineering teams. You will be comfortable working with Retail's leadership to develop and understand the organizational goals and priorities. You will feed these into the roadmap of the application‑enablement team, balancing short‑term impact and long‑term vision.

• Lead the design, development, and operation of new services and functionality added to our SaaS offering.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and cross-team collaboration across the Engineering organization, maximizing the impact of the application‑enablement team initiatives.
• Drive the roadmap of the application‑enablement team, in collaboration with Retail leadership and engineering teams, balancing short‑term impact with long‑term vision.
• Champion best practices in cloud architectures such as 12‑factor apps, observability, and others, to meet high availability, performance, security, and cost efficiency needs of our products and platform.
• Lead the adoption of solutions, patterns and strategies that improve efficiency and development experience across our Engineering organization.
• Evaluate and integrate existing or emerging cloud services and open‑source technologies to enhance our products and platform capabilities and maintain a competitive edge.
• Collaborate with security and compliance teams to embed policies and controls into our products and platform, ensuring adherence to organizational and regulatory standards.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement, mentoring and leading engineering teams to deliver high‑quality solutions and operational excellence.
  You'll have a solid understanding of software, cloud and platform engineering fundamentals, an ability to deliver new solutions into production and a strong desire to learn, are key to succeeding in the role, rather than perfectly matching our stack.

That said, these are the most important technical skills for the role:

• 7+ years of engineering experience overall, with at least 2‑3 years in a similar Principal SW Engineering or SW Architect roles.
• Our codebase uses primarily JavaScript and Python, across various web applications, backend services and analytical processes, and leverages frameworks such as Express.js, Vue, Flask or Pandas.
• This is a hands‑on role; you should be comfortable writing code and building solutions.
• Experience designing and building distributed applications and architectures.

You will be comfortable with different architectural styles and with concepts such as DDD, service‑mesh or data‑mesh.

• Experience building, deploying and operating applications in Kubernetes – we use AKS with a supporting range of tools like argoCD, argo‑workflows, helm, Dapr, and more.
• Familiarity with DevSecOps, Infrastructure as Code and GitOps patterns in order to manage cloud infrastructure. Ideally, you are familiar with Terraform.
• Familiarity with database engines such as MongoDB or PostgreSQL.
• Familiarity with large data and data warehouses/lakehouses, ideally with Databricks.
• Familiarity with FinOps concepts and processes.
• A strong understanding of software engineering best practices such as version control, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and security.
• Relevant certifications such as Azure's Solutions Architect or Kubernetes' CKA are a bonus but not required.
• Oliver Wyman is a global leader in management consulting. With offices in more than 70 cities across 30 countries, Oliver Wyman combines deep industry knowledge with specialized expertise in strategy, operations, risk management, and organization transformation. With more than 7,000 professionals around the world who work with clients to optimize their business, improve their operations and risk profile, and accelerate their organizational performance to seize the most attractive opportunities.