Principal Engineer

Aller Media AB; Stockholms kommun; On-site; SEK 1,500,000 - 2,100,000; Full time

Job summary

Aller Media AB in Stockholm is seeking a Principal Engineer to lift product engineering across teams. This individual contributor role offers leadership without personnel management, with trust and autonomy to shape developer experience, tooling, architecture, and tech strategy across Nordic markets.

You will work across stacks, write code, build tools, and mentor engineers. The role requires deep communication, systems thinking, and hands-on cloud work with JavaScript/TypeScript on frontend,

Qualifications

• Software engineer with many years building digital products.
• Previously held staff/principal engineer or similar.
• Navigate with high trust and high agency.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Understand systems thinking and tradeoffs.
• Hands-on coding with cloud infra across diverse tech stacks; JavaScript/TypeScript on frontend.
• Familiar with AI agents in software development.
• Experience in media/publishing is a plus; Nordic languages helpful.

Responsibilities

• Identify risks and reduce friction across engineering.
• Write tools, observability and auxiliary apps with broad impact.
• Measure and improve developer experience.
• Contribute to forming and implementing a tech strategy.
• Assist teams with advisory and hands-on support.
• Mentor engineers and promote technical initiatives.
• Be a trusted advisor for exploration, prototyping and collaboration.
• Solve ambiguous, high-risk problems beyond the normal team structure.

Skills

Technical leadership

Software engineering

Developer experience

Communication skills

Systems thinking

Hands-on coding

AI in software

Media experience

Nordic languages

Tools

GCP services

CDN

JavaScript/TypeScript

Job description

Come help us create engineering excellence to serve the readers of some of the strongest media brands in the Nordics. We reach millions of readers every day. This is an opportunity to work across all our teams and tech stacks in a high leverage role with plenty of autonomy.

Aller Media is on a journey to unify tech stacks across four countries into our newly built platform. This is the key to our success in digitizing our products, trying out new formats and modernizing the whole business. You will join us at a critical moment and play a big part in our success.

About the role

As a Principal Engineer your job will be to lift all of product engineering. You will work with developer experience, tooling, engineering strategy, architecture and helping teams to solve thorny problems. Success is mostly achieved through others. You will be given a lot of trust and autonomy. This is an individual contributor role with plenty of leadership, but no personnel responsibility.

Key responsibilities

• Identify risks and friction points across the whole engineering organization. Work with reducing this friction and minimize the risks.
• Write code. Not focusing on the critical path but rather building things that help the whole engineering organization improve. This could be tools, observability or auxiliary applications that have a broad impact.
• Measure and improve developer experience
• Take part in forming and implementing a tech strategy
• Help teams solve problems both through advisory and hands on
• Act as a role model and mentor to other engineers as well as sponsor and promoter of technical initiatives
• Be a trusted advisor and go to collaborator to help with exploration, technical understanding and prototyping
• Solve ambiguous, high-risk, high-trust problems that the normal team structure is not built to for

What you bring

• Have spent many years as a software engineer, building digital products.
• Previously held technical leadership roles like staff/principal engineer, architect, tech lead or similar.
• Used to navigate with high trust and high agency
• Very good communication skills. Even though we work with technology, most problems we encounter are interpersonal
• Understanding systems thinking. Being able to zoom out of technical problems to understand the bigger context and the impact of tradeoffs of a technical solution
• You like to contribute hands on. Writing code and working with cloud infrastructure. As we work with many different tech stacks, supported by AI, your favorite coding language matters less. However, much of what we do is built on GCP services, exposed via CDN and generated with Javascript or Typescript.
• Have become fluent in using AI agents and understand how their introduction is changing the software development lifecycle.
• Experience of working in media and publishing is a plus.
• Speaking one or more Nordic language is helpful but not required.

Location

This role is in our Stockholm office in the city center. As you will work across the Nordics, there will be occasional travels to Copenhagen, Oslo and Helsinki.

At Aller we have an office first policy, making an effort to ensure that the office is a nice place to work and meet your colleagues.

What we offer:

• Real impact from day one. A high-leverage role with the autonomy and influence on shaping engineering practices, architecture, and developer experience across the organization.
• Wellbeing and community matter here. We are proud to say that Aller Media is the first Swedish workplace certified Equal Health, putting great focus on women’s health as part of our wellbeing offering. In addition, you'll receive 24 wellness hours each year to support your health and wellbeing in the way that works best for you. We regularly come together for after work, lunches, workouts and other activities that help us build relationships and have fun together.
• Modern office in the center of Stockholm where there is always something going on. From external industry and client events to internal gatherings like Aller Talks and Aller Media News.
• Work with some of the Nordics’ most well-known media brands. At Aller Media, your work helps inform, inspire, and entertain millions of readers, creating moments that matter and digital experiences they engage with every day.
• A culture that balances ambition with kindness. We move fast and we are constantly evolving, but our core values Creative, Dedicated and Decent, is the foundation of how we at Aller Media, approach our work and each other.

Please note that we can only proceed with candidates who are already eligible to work in Sweden, and who live within commuting distance of our office in Stockholm.

The application deadline isOctober 19.

If you have any questions about the position, please reach out to Engineering Manager, Jakob Wolman at [e-mail].