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Principal Engineer
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Principal Engineer
Software consultancy | Leeds, hybrid
Location: Leeds. One day a week on-site, occasional client travel.
Salary: £90,000 to £110,000
Clearance: SC held or eligible. Sponsorship available.
Process: Two stages. One held on-site in Leeds.
The Role
A leadership seat at account level, not a senior engineering seat with a better title.
- You would own the technical direction of a client engagement and run the people delivering it.
- Time splits between the client relationship and your teams.
- Hands-on coding is not the focus.
- Briefs arrive loosely defined.
- Turning a vague problem into an architecture a team can build is most of the job.
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Scope
- Own solution architecture across complex, multi-stakeholder programmes.
- Act as the senior technical voice with client stakeholders and translate decisions for non-technical audiences.
- Run teams. A lead here has three or four engineers. A principal has roughly double that, or several leads on larger programmes.
- Weigh technical calls against cost and commercial reality, and flag where more value can be added.
- Mentor engineers and shape internal engineering practice.
Essential
- Consultancy or client-facing delivery experience. The hard gate. Strong technologists have been turned down for lacking it.
- Presence. Someone you would put in front of a client to lead a programme without hesitation.
- Genuinely multi-language. Engineering judgement and architecture matter more than any one stack.
- Credible across cloud, CI/CD, engineering and architecture.
- Track record leading engineers and owning a programme technically.
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Useful
- Kotlin, C#/.NET, TypeScript, React or Azure. None are dealbreakers.
- Existing SC clearance.
A lead ready for the step up will be considered, with salary pitched accordingly.
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