Senior Principal Engineer – Cloud & Microservices

hkex; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

HKEX in London is seeking a Principal Engineer to drive the technical direction and architecture of complex distributed systems. The role focuses on design, delivery, and secure, scalable cloud-native applications using Kubernetes, Kafka, and modern DevOps practices.

You will lead technical discussions, set standards, and mentor teams while collaborating with product, security, and operations to deliver business-critical capabilities.

Qualifications

• University degree in Computer Science, Engineering, related STEM discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Significant hands-on software engineering experience in Java, building and operating distributed systems.
• Deep experience with microservices, APIs, event-driven architectures (Kafka) and integration patterns.
• Design and build secure, cloud-native applications using modern engineering practices (Kubernetes).
• Strong knowledge of secure software development, including authentication, authorisation, encryption, and secure-by-design principles.
• Experience with Kubernetes, container platforms, and scalable production environments.
• Practical DevOps expertise across CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, GitOps, automated testing, and deployment automation.

Responsibilities

• Drive the technical direction, architecture, design, and delivery of complex platforms and applications.
• Provide leadership through hands-on software engineering, mentoring, and cross-team influence without people management oversight.
• Establish engineering standards, best practices, and secure-by-design principles across the organisation.
• Engage with senior stakeholders and external parties to influence strategy and technology decisions.

Skills

Java

Microservices

Kafka

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Security by design

Architectural leadership

Stakeholder management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Docker

OpenShift

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

HKEX in London is seeking a Principal Engineer to drive the technical direction and architecture of complex distributed systems. The role focuses on design, delivery, and secure, scalable cloud-native applications using Kubernetes, Kafka, and modern DevOps practices.

You will lead technical discussions, set standards, and mentor teams while collaborating with product, security, and operations to deliver business-critical capabilities.