Full job description

Principal Engineer

Hybrid role in Newcastle upon Tyne

Up to 110k max.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced and technically driven Principal Engineer to play a key role in shaping the future of a high-performance trading platform.

You will lead major platform re-architecture and modernisation initiatives, helping to design and deliver scalable, resilient and low-latency systems for real-time trading environments. Working closely with Product, Operations and Engineering teams, you will have significant influence over technical strategy and the future direction of the platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead platform re-architecture and modernisation initiatives.
• Design scalable, resilient and high-performance distributed systems.
• Develop and evolve low-latency, event-driven architectures for real-time trading environments.
• Drive key architectural decisions while balancing scalability, technical debt, delivery and commercial priorities.
• Improve platform performance, automation, monitoring and deployment processes.
• Work closely with Product and Operations teams to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
• Provide technical leadership and help shape the wider engineering roadmap.
• Champion high standards around code quality, testing, observability, security and scalability.
• Mentor and support engineers through technical guidance, coaching and peer reviews.
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives and encourage the adoption of modern technologies and engineering practices.
• Support post-incident reviews and help embed learnings into future engineering processes.

What We're Looking For

• Strong experience designing and building scalable, distributed systems.
• Experience with real-time and low-latency platform architecture.
• Proven experience leading platform modernisation, migration or re-architecture projects.
• Strong understanding of event-driven systems, APIs, cloud-native technologies and CI/CD.
• Excellent knowledge of scalability, resilience, performance and operational best practices.
• Strong technical leadership skills with the ability to influence engineering and business stakeholders.
• Experience mentoring engineers and raising technical standards across teams.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly.

Desirable Experience

• Experience or a strong understanding of financial markets technology.
• Exposure to electronic trading, OTC markets, FX, fixed income or similar trading environments.
• Understanding of trading workflows, pricing, execution platforms and post-trade processes.
• Awareness of risk, compliance, security and auditability requirements within financial services.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary
• 25 days annual leave, plus bank holidays
• Discretionary performance bonus
• Flexible working
• Private Medical Insurance
• Life Insurance – 5x salary
• Pension scheme
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Salary Sacrifice Bike to Work Scheme
• Salary Sacrifice Electric Car Scheme
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