Principal Software Engineer - Operations and Customer...

About Iglu Why You'll Love Working Here

At Iglu.com , we're more than just a travel company — we’re the UK’s leading online cruise retailer, and we’re redefining what it means to book a cruise in the digital age.

Working at Iglu means:

• 💬 Flat structure, real impact – Your ideas matter. Everyone contributes, and you’ll see the results of your work fast.

• 🌴 Cruise perks & travel love – We’re in the business of adventure, and you’ll feel it.

• 🧠 Smart, supportive people – Join a talented, close-knit team that genuinely enjoys solving hard problems together.

• 🚀 Room to grow – We’re on a transformation journey, and there’s huge opportunity to shape the future with us.

• Training and development - Paid for training, conferences and certification e.g. AWS Certs.

We combine a passion for travel with a love for technology , delivering smart, seamless customer experiences and building platforms that handle the complexity of modern cruising — all while keeping things collaborative and fun.

What you will be doing and why it matters

As a Principal Engineer at IgluCruise.com, you’ll take technical ownership of the CRM and operations domains , helping to shape the evolution of our enterprise platforms and the seamless integration of business-critical systems.

From architecting clean, scalable integrations between internal and external platforms to overseeing the development of vital applications that power our customer service and operations — your work will be foundational to how we operate and grow .

You’ll be at the technical heart of a business that’s transforming how people book cruises online — a sector ripe for innovation and full of complexity.

Who will I be working with?

You’ll report directly to the Director of Engineering and play a leadership role across two cross-functional Product Teams focused on CRM and operations.

You’ll be supported by and work closely with:

• The Head of Architecture to align technical direction with target architecture

• The Director of Engineering to drive engineering strategy and team growth

• The Head of QA to ensure high standards of quality, automation, and release confidence

• The Lead Engineers and Software Engineers in the CRM and operations Product Teams

• Business stakeholders as a technical consultant for new idea submissions

Collaboration will be at the heart of your role — ensuring technology choices and development practices are aligned with business needs and delivered with excellence.

What you will own

Enterprise COTS SaaS platforms covering:

• Customer service and sales lead management 

• Back office automation platform

• Call centre platform

Bespoke development covering:

• Agent Reservations (Configure, Price, Quote and Book) 

• Booking management platform

• Customer Booking Portal

What we are looking for

• Contribute to sprint planning while providing architectural guidance to product teams.

• Shape the long-term technical vision for bespoke software, looking beyond immediate delivery needs.

• Serve as a technical advisor to business units aligned with product teams, with a primary focus on Sales and Customer Service.

• Bring deep expertise in application and platform development.

• Demonstrate strong proficiency in enterprise integration patterns (including APIs and event driven design), AWS and SQL as well as noSQL databases.

• Lead architecture and development decision-making with confidence and clarity.

• Maintain a hands-on approach, effectively balancing strategic thinking with practical implementation.

• Someone who can remain calm under pressure to investigate and resolve technical issues and challenges.

Tech at Iglu:

• We work in an Agile way but let teams decide how to operate within those boundaries

• We are happy with remote and office working

• We are pragmatic about what technologies we use but always are evaluating new tools/languages/frameworks

• We are passionate about Infrastructure as code and AWS is our platform of choice

• We believe in autonomy and responsibility to sit in the teams that are building and deploying the software.

• Small frequent deployments are what we strive for

Experience / Qualifications:

• Experience in running engineering teams or cross functional teams

• Experience designing and developing highly available and scalable distributed solutions ideally ecommerce.

• Experience in Infrastructure as Code

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

• Experience leading and mentoring a team of software developers

• Extensive experience of C#, MVC and SQL (.net framework and .net core)

• Experience working closely with Stakeholders and wider business

• Experience with AWS (or other cloud technologies)

• Experience with distributed caching

• Experience with search technologies

• Exposure to TeamCity, Octopus and Bitbucket Pipelines

This role can be based in either of our amazing offices in Havant (Portsmouth) or Wimbledon (London)