Principal Full Stack Engineer

We’re hiring a Principal Full Stack Engineer to play a leading technical role in the rebuild and in shaping how the engineering function operates over the next several years. You’ll be heavily weighted towards backend - designing services, data flows, and the integrations that make consumer journeys work at scale - while being credible across the full stack. You’ll set patterns others follow, make the architecture decisions that matter, and have real influence over how we build, not just what we build. This is a role for someone who wants to do their best work on a platform that genuinely matters to the business, with the autonomy to shape it. The engineering team is small and senior, and we’re in a deliberate hiring phase to grow it around the new platform and the AI-first practice. That makes this hire materially important - you’ll be one of a small group setting the tone for what comes next. The opportunity A few things make this role interesting right now. A new consumer facing platform is well underway - foundational architecture in place, plenty still to build - so there’s real scope to shape what comes next. Alongside the platform, we’re rebuilding the engineering team itself as an AI-first function and looking for people who can help define what that means in practice. The work reaches hundreds of thousands of car buyers and the biggest brands in automotive. What you’ll do

• Lead the technical design of significant parts of the new consumer platform

• Make architecture and pattern decisions that other engineers build on

• Build and own backend services (APIs, data flows, integrations) while staying hands-on across the stack

• Shape how the team uses AI tooling as part of standard engineering practice

• Mentor senior engineers and influence how we hire and grow the function

• Deep experience building production systems in Node.js / TypeScript, with strong full-stack credibility (Next.js / React on the front end)

• Strong track record of architectural decisions on systems that handle real scale and real complexity

• Cloud experience - Azure ideal, AWS / GCP fine

• Demonstrated fluency with modern AI coding tools as part of how you work - not “open to AI”, but already curious and experimenting/doing

• The seniority and presence to lead technically without needing a formal mandate every time

• A strong product instinct - understanding why you’re building something, not just what

Helpful

• Experience leading a platform rebuild or major modernisation

• Background in marketing tech, automotive, or consumer-facing data-rich businesses

• Experience shaping engineering practices (CI/CD, IaC, testing, code review culture)

• Exposure to event-driven architectures and message-based integration

This is a Principal-level role. Salary will be benchmarked at the upper end of the Principal Engineer range - competitive with what you’d expect from an established UK business hiring at this level. Where you’ll work We’re a Liverpool-based business with two days a week (Monday and Tuesday) together in our city centre office. The rest of the week is from home. For this role we’re looking for someone within commuting distance of Liverpool. We’ve thought hard about location for this role and chosen hybrid over remote: the rebuild is at a stage where in-person design conversations matter, and we want our senior engineers in the room shaping the function as well as the code. You’ll work alongside our CEO and our product and technology leadership. Benefits

• Annual training and conference budget

• Modern engineering tools, including paid licences for AI coding tools as standard

• Annual company-wide bonus scheme

• Pension plan

• Private health insurance

• Cycle to work programme

• Active social calendar including charity sporting events

TLA, an automotive marketing business founded 24 years ago, helps the world’s biggest car brands - Volkswagen, BMW, Ford and others - reach in-market buyers. Our consumer sites (Green.Car, Askaprice, Car Keys and more) capture and qualify hundreds of thousands of car-buying intents annually, and our platforms validate and route those leads to the brands that want them. We’re at an inflection point. We’re rebuilding our consumer-facing platform from the ground up on a modern Node.js stack, and we’re doing it as an AI-first engineering function. We’re an established, profitable business with two decades of relationships at the heart of UK automotive marketing. The engineering rebuild reflects where we want the next decade to come from.