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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Principal Software Engineer (Platform) - **Company:** Cazoo Ltd - **Location:** Richmond, UK (Remote available) - **Salary:** £50,879.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Java (Programming Language), Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Web Services, Computing Platforms, Architectural Patterns, Automation of Tests, Microsoft Azure, Cloud Engineering, Continuous Integration, Cursor, Distributed Systems, Node.Js, Performance Tuning, Software Architecture, Software Engineering, TypeScript, Cloud Platform System, Spring Cloud, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Technical Debt, AI Coding Agents, Backend, Event Driven Architecture, Kubernetes, Production Code, Terraform, Docker, Microservices - **Published:** October 21, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs/details/5937245217 ## About the Role * Extensive hands-on backend software engineering experience, designing, building and operating business-critical production systems, ideally within a product-led technology environment. * Proficiency in a modern backend language, ideally TypeScript/Node.js, although we're open to engineers with strong transferable experience in languages such as Java. * Strong software architecture expertise, with experience designing distributed systems, microservices, APIs and event-driven applications. * Experience modernising complex software platforms, including decomposing legacy applications, introducing new architectural patterns and migrating production workloads safely. * Experience building cloud-native applications and services, preferably on Azure, although strong AWS or GCP experience is also relevant. * Demonstrable Principal-level technical leadership, setting architectural direction, establishing engineering standards and influencing technical decisions across multiple engineering teams. Experience leading engineering chapters, guilds or equivalent communities would be particularly valuable. * A strong understanding of modern engineering practices, including automated testing, CI/CD, observability, performance optimisation and maintaining production reliability. * Familiarity with cloud platform technologies, such as Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform and managed cloud services, with an understanding of how these support software development and delivery. * Sound engineering judgement, including balancing technical debt against delivery priorities, evaluating build-versus-buy decisions and making pragmatic architectural trade-offs. * An interest in AI-assisted software development, including tools such as Claude Code, Cursor or GitHub Copilot, and how they can be used responsibly to improve engineering productivity. Experience working with high-traffic consumer products, marketplaces, classifieds or automotive platforms would be advantageous. We're particularly interested in engineers who have progressed into broader architectural and technical leadership responsibilities while remaining actively involved in building software. ## Description We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help shape the next generation of Cazoo's technology platform. We're undertaking a significant modernisation of our existing Azure-based architecture, moving towards more scalable, cloud-native and event-driven services. This is an opportunity to influence how our core platform evolves, improve the experience of our engineering teams and build the foundations that support our customer-facing products. This is a hands-on technical leadership role, combining software engineering, architecture and platform strategy. You'll spend around half your time actively contributing to engineering delivery, while also helping set technical direction, mentoring engineers and driving initiatives across teams. You'll be responsible for: * Building and modernising software: Design, develop and deliver scalable backend services, APIs and event-driven systems, including the safe migration and retirement of legacy applications. * Shaping software architecture: Make key decisions around service boundaries, distributed systems, cloud-native design and how our platform evolves. * Remaining hands-on: Write production code, solve complex engineering problems, review pull requests and work directly alongside other engineers. * Driving technical direction: Help shape and deliver our engineering roadmap, balancing long-term architectural improvements with commercial and product priorities. * Improving developer experience: Design and evolve shared services, reusable components and engineering tooling that make it easier for teams to build, test and deliver software. * Leading engineering practices: Establish consistent engineering standards, contribute to engineering guilds or chapters and drive technical improvements across multiple squads. * Championing engineering excellence: Improve reliability, scalability, observability, performance and maintainability across our production systems. * Developing engineers: Mentor and support engineers, facilitate technical discussions and help teams make sound architectural decisions. * Embracing AI-assisted engineering: Help establish effective practices for AI development tools, improving engineering productivity while maintaining appropriate quality and security standards. You'll have genuine ownership and influence, with the opportunity to make meaningful architectural decisions while remaining close to the technology and people delivering them.