Consulting/Principal Software Engineer

Acts as the technical lead and facilitator for a cross-functional squad. In addition to hands-on design, coding, and/or test automation, this role sets technical direction, shapes delivery plans, drives quality strategy, and unblocks the team through facilitation-not line management. Partners closely with Product, Architecture, QE, SRE/Platform, and adjacent squads to deliver reliable, secure, and observable software., * Serve as the first line of technical escalation for the squad's services/components.

• Facilitate team ceremonies (refinement, technical grooming, sprint planning, design reviews) with a focus on flow and outcomes.
• Translate product objectives into sound technical designs and testable acceptance criteria; decompose epics into implementable stories.
• Design and implement complex features; complete complex bug fixes and performance improvements.
• Define and uphold the Definition of Ready/Done, including code quality, automated test coverage, security checks, and observability.
• Establish/maintain CI/CD pipelines, quality gates, and sensible branching/release strategies.
• Drive a pragmatic quality strategy: test pyramid balance, contract tests, data management, environments, and non-functional testing.
• Partner with TIO on SLOs, alerting, runbooks, incident response, and post-incident learning
• Mentor through pairing, code/test reviews, and architecture discussions (no performance management duties)
• Document designs and decisions (e.g., ADRs), and keep technical docs and runbooks current.
• Coordinate dependencies and integration with other squads and external partners; surface risks with clear options/trade-offs.
• Track and improve key delivery/quality indicators (lead time, change fail rate, MTTR, escaped defects, performance budgets)

• Around 7+ years of experience in Software Engineering, Quality Engineering, or related roles, contributing to complex systems in production.
• Experience leading through influence, such as technical leadership, feature ownership, or community/guild participation across design, delivery, and operations.
• A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience gained through work, training, or self-directed learning.
• Demonstrated depth in at least one technical domain, such as distributed systems, data platforms, or high-scale web or mobile applications.
• Comfortable collaborating with cross-functional teams, external partners, and vendors in inclusive and respectful environments.
• Strong understanding of Agile and Lean practices, including backlog refinement, breaking work into incremental deliverables, and risk-aware planning.
• Experience defining and applying test strategies, including test pyramid principles, shift-left practices, CI/CD quality checks, and release readiness.
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages or stacks, such as Java/JVM, JavaScript/TypeScript, C#/.NET, Python, C/C++, or SQL.
• Experience working in Linux or Windows environments.
• Familiarity with relational and non-relational databases, including data modelling and performance tuning.
• Experience or familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, containerised environments, cloud fundamentals, and observability tools (logs, metrics, traces).
• Working knowledge of secure coding practices, performance analysis, reliability concepts (such as SLOs and error budgets), and participation in incident response and learning reviews.
• Development-focused experience in API and service design, domain modelling, concurrency, resilience patterns, refactoring, and code quality, or quality-focused experience in test automation, UI/API testing, contract testing, and performance testing using widely adopted tools.

Join our team and contribute to a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence. If you are ready to advance your career and make a significant impact, we encourage you to apply.

Work in a way that works for you

We promote a healthy work/life balance across the organisation. We offer an appealing working prospect for our people. With numerous wellbeing initiatives, shared parental leave, study assistance and sabbaticals, we will help you meet your immediate responsibilities and your long-term goals.

• Working flexible hours - flexing the times when you work in the day to help you fit everything in and work when you are the most productive.

Working for you

We know that your well-being and happiness are key to a long and successful career. These are some of the benefits we are delighted to offer:

• Comprehensive Pension Plan

• Home, office, or commuting allowance.

• Generous vacation entitlement and option for sabbatical leave

• Maternity, Paternity, Adoption and Family Care leave

• Flexible working hours

• Personal Choice budget

• Internal communities and networks

• Various employee discounts

• Recruitment introduction reward

• Employee Assistance Program (global)

The SciVal Development Team is a cross-functional group comprising Frontend, Backend, and Quality Engineers who work closely together. The team collaborates closely with UX and Product to design, build, and deliver high-quality features efficiently and reliably., A global leader in information and analytics, we help researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society. Building on our publishing heritage, we combine quality information and vast data sets with analytics to support visionary science and research, health education and interactive learning, as well as exceptional healthcare and clinical practice. At Elsevier, your work contributes to the world's grand challenges and a more sustainable future. We harness innovative technologies to support science and healthcare to partner for a better world.