Principal Software Engineer - Glasgow

We're looking for an experienced Principal Software Engineer to join Phlo full-time. This is a hands-on technical leadership role at a company scaling fast. You'll own the parts of our platform where the stakes are highest, set the bar for how we build and help the engineers around you get better.

We're building AI-native. We expect our engineers to use AI tooling day-to-day and we want someone excited to push how far it can take us, not follow a playbook. You'll be part of a close-knit product delivery team of developers, designers and product owners and you'll play a key part in shaping the future of Phlo.

The Job

On a day-to-day basis, you’ll be involved in:

• Owning the hard problems. You'll take the substantial, ambiguous, business-critical changes from idea to production, and make the calls on how our platform evolves.
• Leading delivery within your team. Working collaboratively with developers, designers, product owners and the wider business to take projects from concept through to delivery, keeping the team shipping value early and often.
• Growing the people around you. You'll coach engineers through the tricky problems, review work in a way that makes people better, and lift the capability of the whole team.
• Setting the technical bar. You'll be the go-to person for how our platform works, lead the technical discovery on what's coming next, and make sure the big decisions are backed by evidence rather than opinion.
• Keeping us running. You'll support our production systems and help the team build their own instincts for spotting and fixing problems.
• Working in a productive development environment. Some of the tools we currently use are TypeScript, React, Next.js, Vite, Playwright, Node, Koa, Postgres, Kubernetes, GCP.

The Person

Ideally, we’re looking for someone with the following:

• A track record of shipping. You've taken ideas from nothing to production at scale, for real users and you do your best work when the problem is open-ended and the direction is yours to set.
• A bias to build and push through. Fast-moving, uncertain environments energise you. You take the initiative, get stuck in, and you'd rather ship and learn than deliberate forever.
• A conviction about AI. You believe in its power to change how engineering teams work and you know how to reshape delivery around it to raise productivity and quality.
• Strong full-stack web development experience. You're as comfortable in a database as you are building APIs and responsive web apps, with a real command of modern web and cloud tech.
• Systems thinking. You look past the single project to how everything fits together and holds up as it scales.
• The judgement to lead technical direction. You spot the problems worth solving, back your case with evidence, and bring people with you rather than forcing it through.
• A coaching instinct. You like helping others grow and sharing what you know, not hoarding the interesting work.
• Clear communication. You can pitch a technical decision to another engineer or to a non-technical stakeholder and land it either way.
• You value in-person time. The role is hybrid, but we're looking for people who are keen to be in our Glasgow office regularly to collaborate and build a strong team culture.