Principle Engineer

RVU Co UK; Cardiff; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology firm in Cardiff is seeking a Principal Engineer to provide strategic technical leadership and mentorship. The successful candidate will define the long-term technical vision and ensure scalable, resilient systems across teams. You will foster a culture of technical excellence and influence engineering practices while managing complex technical challenges. This role offers a competitive salary, hybrid working, and numerous professional development opportunities.

Benefits

10% discretionary yearly bonus

Hybrid working approach

Employer matching pension contributions

Work from Home budget

Excellent maternity and paternity leave policy

25 days holiday (increasing to 30 days)

Private medical cover

Employee discounts programme

Regular team events

Qualifications

• Excellent understanding of Cloud technologies and their application.
• Deep technical knowledge across modern frameworks and ability to solve complex problems.
• Proven ability to manage large-scale organizational change.

Responsibilities

• Own and articulate the long-term technical vision and architectural strategy.
• Act as a principal mentor and coach to all engineers.
• Operat with complete autonomy on high-impact objectives.

Skills

Cloud technologies

Modern frameworks (Go, React, .Net, Python)

Infrastructure management

Technical mentoring

Communication skills

Problem-solving

Job description

Principle Engineer

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Cardiff

Description

In 2002, we became the first insurance comparison site. Our purpose? To make the process of managing your insurance, utilities or personal finances as easy as possible.

We’re part of RVU. A group of online brands that also include Uswitch, Tempcover and money.co.uk. As a group, we use our shared knowledge to empower people, and help them make decisions confidently across a range of household services.

Confused.com is at the cutting edge of the FinTech industry, so we’re always looking for extraordinary talent. If you love what you do, get in touch today!

We\'re looking for a Principal Software Engineer who thrives on organisational influence and technical mentorship to tackle our most ambiguous, high-leverage problems that shape the future of our business. You\'ll operate with near-complete autonomy and accountability, delivering solutions that require mastery of large-scale, distributed systems.

As a Principal Software Engineer at Confused, you will be the technical leader and strategic voice for an entire vertical or a significant cross-cutting area of our business. You will be responsible for defining the long-term technical vision, shaping architecture, and driving execution across multiple teams to achieve strategic, company-wide impact, ensuring our systems and processes are world-class, scalable, and aligned with Confused and RVU’s business goals.

Teams will look to you for guidance and you will serve as the escalation point for the most complex technical decisions. You will be mentoring and pairing with senior and staff engineers, helping them grow into technical leaders and foster a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning.

What you'll be doing

Strategic Technical Leadership & Expertise

• Define the vision: Own and articulate the long-term technical vision and architectural strategy.
• Drive strategic impact: Identify and execute high-leverage technical initiatives (impacting a vertical or the entire organisation) that directly translate into measurable business growth or significant operational efficiency gains.
• Architectural stewardship: Design, govern, and audit the most complex and critical systems, ensuring they are scalable, resilient, and maintainable over a multi-year horizon.
• Technical evolution: Continuously evaluate new tools, technologies, and paradigms, making strategic recommendations to adopt or deprecate them to keep our engineering ecosystem best-in-class.

Leadership & Influence

• Organisational influence: Influence and align engineering and product strategy across multiple teams and business units
• Mentorship & coaching: Act as a principal mentor and coach to all engineers, elevating the technical expertise and standards across the entire engineering organisation.
• Conflict resolution: Resolve the most high-stakes, cross-team technical and non-technical conflicts, building consensus among senior stakeholders.
• Communication: Communicate complex technical decisions and their strategic implications to leadership and non-technical audiences effectively.

Delivery & Execution

• Autonomy & accountability: Operate with complete autonomy on high-impact objectives, holding yourself and adjacent teams accountable for long-term success.
• Best practice champion: Define, implement, and enforce best-in-class software practices, operational excellence, and quality standards (e.g., CI/CD, production readiness, testing).
• Risk management: Proactively identify and mitigate significant technical debt, security risks, and operational vulnerabilities that could pose a threat to the business’s long-term health.

What we\'re looking for

• Excellent understanding of Cloud technologies, and their application to solve problems such as Event/Data Ingestion and 3rd Party API Integrations. As well as a strong appreciation of A/B Testing, Monitoring and DevOps principles.
• Deep technical knowledge across modern frameworks (Go, React, .Net, Python), capable of solving undefined, novel, or highly complex problems within a major domain area.
• Extensive experience designing, deploying, and maintaining large-scale, distributed systems and can manage the infrastructure and scalability strategy across multiple teams.
• Define what "Production Ready" means, ensuring security, resilience, and operational excellence.
• You are a gifted communicator who can translate technical complexity into strategic business context, influencing senior leaders and peers effectively.
• Actively mentor and sponsor senior talent, elevating engineering capability and culture across large parts of the business.
• Proven ability to manage organisational change, driving large-scale programs from ambiguous conception through to successful, measurable strategic impact.
• Identify the most critical problems, develop the solution, and execute it without explicit direction.

What we offer

We want to give you a great work environment, support your growth both personally and professionally, and provide benefits that make your time at RVU even more enjoyable. Here are some of the benefits you can look forward to:

• 10% discretionary yearly bonus and yearly pay reviews (based on RVU and personal performance)
• A hybrid working approach with 2 in-office days per week and up to 22 working days per year to “work from anywhere”
• Employer matching pension contributions up to 7.5%
• A one-off £300 “Work from Home” budget to help contribute towards a great work environment at home
• Excellent maternity, paternity, shared parental and adoption leave policy, for those key moments in your life
• 25 days holiday (increasing to 30 days) + 2 days “My Time” per year
• Private medical cover, critical illness cover , dental plans and employee assistance programme
• Free gym access
• Employee discounts programme
• A healthy learning and training budget to support your development
• Electric vehicle and cycle to work scheme
• Regular events - from team socials to company-wide events with insightful external speakers, we want to make sure our colleagues continue to feel connected