Principal Developer

As a Principal Developer in the IP Development team, you will provide senior technical leadership and architectural direction across squads to ensure consistent, high-quality, and scalable engineering delivery. You will work closely with Lead Developers, Engineering Managers, Product Managers, and cross-functional teams to guide technical strategy, maintain alignment across the platform, and create the conditions for teams to deliver effectively. Your role is critical in upholding engineering standards, driving innovation, and ensuring a cohesive and sustainable technical ecosystem during the sabbatical period of the permanent postholder. This is a 6 month FTC. Hybrid flexible in London, UK. Responsibilities:

• Lead architectural design decisions, including tech stack choices, integration patterns, and hosting approaches.
• Define and uphold minimum engineering standards, ensuring NFR benchmarks for performance, scalability, availability, and resilience are consistently met.
• Plan and review security considerations and integration strategies across systems.
• Conduct and lead technical reviews ahead of major releases to ensure quality, alignment, and readiness.
• Identify opportunities for innovation through AI, DevTools, frameworks, and emerging technologies.
• Run proofs of concept to validate new technologies and assess their strategic fit.
• Maintain technology alignment across squads, reducing duplication and promoting consistent, scalable approaches.
• Oversee shared libraries, APIs, and platform components to ensure quality, reliability, and reusability.
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring to Lead Developers and senior engineers.
• Lead root-cause analyses on critical issues and provide guidance on long-term remediation.

Do you have experience in TypeScript?, * Extensive experience in senior engineering roles with responsibility for architectural leadership and cross-team technical governance.

• Strong technical background with expertise in modern web architectures, integrations, and cloud-native environments.
• Proven ability to define and maintain NFR standards and ensure engineering quality at scale.
• Experience with modern TypeScript stacks (React, NestJS) and cloud platforms such as Azure; familiarity with Java is beneficial.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical reviews, provide design oversight, and guide platform-level decisions.
• Ability to identify emerging technologies, run PoCs, and drive innovation into production teams.
• Skilled in mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical direction across squads.
• Strong problem-solving capability, including experience conducting root-cause analyses of critical issues.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills across engineering, product, and leadership roles.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, evolving technical environments and driving clarity.