Senior Principal Software Architect: Cloud & Data Leadership

hargreaveslansdown; West of England; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

25 days holiday

Hybrid working

Pension up to 11%

Private medical insurance

Life insurance

Income protection

Wellbeing resources

Volunteer days

Job summary

Hargreaves Lansdown seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead architectural transformation in our Investment Growth Tribe. You will define high-level architectures, establish guardrails, and empower teams to deliver data‑driven solutions with a focus on clarity, collaboration, and mentorship.

You will influence cloud architecture choices, promote observability and security, and guide teams through modern transformation while partnering with product and engineering managers.

Qualifications

• Proven leadership in large-scale technology transformation.
• Strong expertise in modern architectural patterns and cloud-native design.
• Clear communication to influence at all levels of the organisation.
• Experience coaching teams on engineering and architecture best practices.

Responsibilities

• Define and document high-level architectures with trade-offs, risks and dependencies.
• Provide architectural principles and best-practice guidelines for teams.
• Foster data-driven decision making with cross-team metrics.
• Promote documentation practices: ADRs, memos, and C4 diagrams.
• Guide cloud choices for container orchestration using AWS services.
• Champion observability, security and networking best practices.
• Improve Developer Experience through tooling and frameworks.
• Mentor engineering teams and support skill development.
• Lead Event-Driven Architecture discussions and cost forecasting.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering managers on priorities.

Skills

Leadership

Architectural design

Cloud-native

Container orchestration

Communication

Mentoring

Security & observability

Tools

TypeScript/React/Node.js

AWS/Kubernetes/Docker

Terraform

Job description

Hargreaves Lansdown seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead architectural transformation in our Investment Growth Tribe. You will define high-level architectures, establish guardrails, and empower teams to deliver data‑driven solutions with a focus on clarity, collaboration, and mentorship.

You will influence cloud architecture choices, promote observability and security, and guide teams through modern transformation while partnering with product and engineering managers.