Principal Software Engineer - Technical Strategy & Delivery

Hippo Digital Limited; Leeds; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension scheme

25 days holiday

Cycle-to-work

Wellbeing programme

Job summary

Hippo Digital Limited in Leeds is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead strategic technical direction across squads, shaping software architectures and delivery pipelines. You will partner with senior stakeholders to design innovative, scalable solutions and drive multi-team prioritisation to align with business priorities.

You will act as a senior mentor, ensure best practices, and represent Hippo’s technical vision to executives while advancing engineering standards across the firm.

Qualifications

• Mastery of multiple modern programming languages and extensive engineering experience across diverse technology stacks (Python, Java, Node, etc.)
• Expert track record of leading multiple delivery teams to deliver enterprise-scale, high-quality, and technology-agnostic solutions.
• Strategic mastery in coaching and guiding senior engineers and leads to achieve optimal results.
• Exceptional verbal/written communication skills, with the ability to influence both technical and executive audiences.
• Expert knowledge of the full development lifecycle for user-centred digital solutions at scale.
• Advanced expertise in architectural strategies and technical roadmaps across diverse and complex environments.
• Expert level experience with containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes) and complex Microservices architectures.
• Strategic design of system integrations and large-scale application architectures.
• Mastery of agile methodologies and their application across large, distributed teams.
• Enterprise-level expertise in Infrastructure as Code and public cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Strategy-level experience with CI/CD tools and automation at an organisational level.

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic technical guidance across multiple squads as a high-level SME to ensure user-centred software follows best practice.
• Partner with senior stakeholders to explore, design and deliver innovative solutions to the most complex client problems.
• Oversee and optimise the design and management of complex software development and deployment pipelines, removing strategic bottlenecks.
• Direct the prioritisation of multi-team workloads, ensuring alignment with high-level operational priorities and complex work-streams.
• Act as a high-level communicator and presenter, representing Hippo’s technical vision to executive stakeholders.
• Drive strategic relationships with key stakeholders, ensuring that systemic engineering challenges are overcome.
• Drive the recruitment strategy for engineering and lead high-level professional development, coaching, and succession planning.
• Champion Hippo’s Engineering Herd globally through thought leadership, workshops, and industry conferences.

Skills

Python

Java

Node.js

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

AWS

Azure

GCP

Architectures

Leadership

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD Tools

Job description

Hippo Digital Limited in Leeds is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead strategic technical direction across squads, shaping software architectures and delivery pipelines. You will partner with senior stakeholders to design innovative, scalable solutions and drive multi-team prioritisation to align with business priorities.

You will act as a senior mentor, ensure best practices, and represent Hippo’s technical vision to executives while advancing engineering standards across the firm.