Principal Engineer

Blue Light Card. Individually great, together unstoppable

The Role and the Team

We have a new exciting opportunity for a Principal Engineer to join our Engineering team at Blue Light Card. In this key role, you’ll work closely with the Director of Engineering and cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality software products, ensuring seamless production systems. You’ll shape technical solutions, establish design standards, and drive continuous improvement within our Engineering Community of Practice. 

You’ll be an integral part of the Engineering Senior Management Team, offering your expertise to influence strategic initiatives, shape engineering direction, and provide valuable input on technology choices. You’ll stay hands-on with coding, build proof of concepts, and support incident resolution, contributing your technical insights to ensure the long-term success and evolution of the team and technology. 

What You’ll Do

• Lead by example, setting clear expectations for technical excellence and collaboration across teams, offering coaching and constructive feedback, and nurturing a culture of high performance

• Demonstrate strong coding skills to coach and support engineers effectively, guide architectural decisions, and occasionally build proofs of concept to explore solutions and inspire teams. Engaging directly at the code level ensures your guidance is practical, grounded, and impactful, even if day-to-day coding is not the primary focus

• Foster a supportive environment for reflection and learning by encouraging continuous improvement through Communities of Practice, and promoting knowledge sharing and technical discussions across teams

• Champion best practices by defining and advocating for modern, scalable, and maintainable software development, testing, and delivery standards that are inclusive and sustainable

• Advocate for quality by driving initiatives that enhance code quality, testing coverage, and system reliability, while ensuring alignment with established quality standards

• Provide technical guidance, steering teams through complex obstacles as a trusted subject matter expert, and ensuring alignment with long-term technical roadmaps

• Support operational excellence by working closely with Platform Engineering to ensure systems are reliable, performant, and scalable, stepping up during critical incidents and contributing to lasting solutions

• Collaborate with Product and Design management to ensure technical priorities are aligned with business goals and help shape roadmaps and priorities for the team

• Optimise efficiency by mentoring teams in designing solutions that balance technical excellence across projects

What You’ll Bring 

• Extensive engineering expertise as a principal engineer with deep knowledge of Cloud Architectural Patterns, Microservice Patterns, and related technologies

• Proven ability to design and implement best practices for app, web, backend, and database technologies to deliver scalable, high-quality solutions

• Hands-on experience with Cloud Infrastructure and DevOps tools including AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines with a focus on applying industry best practices

• Strong coding skills that enable you to support engineers, influence architectural decisions, and create proofs of concept when necessary. This technical foundation ensures your guidance is practical, hands-on, and impactful, even if you are not coding every day.

• A track record of success with multiple fast-paced and agile organisations delivering impactful results in dynamic environments

• Exceptional problem-solving skills, with a talent for defining and implementing best practices across engineering teams

• A commitment to contributing to the long-term success of engineering initiatives through strategic thinking and technical expertise

• Strong communication and collaboration skills, bridging the gap between technical and non-technical teams

• Passion for continuous learning, mentoring, and fostering a collaborative, knowledge-sharing environment

Our Culture

Our members, partners and colleagues are at the heart of everything we do.  

Our colleagues are integral to helping create the unique experience we deliver, so we’re genuinely committed to creating a place where our team love to work, and people want to join. We work as a team and try to have a bit of fun while we do it, and we recognise the importance of culture and the positive impact it can have on performance for you, the team, our organisation and our members. We believe in attracting the best talent no matter where you are, and have a hybrid working model, with colleagues based in London, the East Midlands and around the country. 

We're also officially recognised as a Top 100 Great Place To Work UK, one of the UK's Best Workplaces for Wellbeing, Top 100 Best Workplaces for Women and recognised as investors in wellbeing by Investors in People. 

What We Offer

• Hybrid working 

• 25 days plus public holidays, buy and sell and an additional day off for your birthday 

• A company bonus scheme

• Great social events e.g., Christmas party, family fun day, summer party, sports matches

• Learning and development opportunities 

• Group auto-enrolment pension plan

• Enhanced maternity, paternity, sick pay

• Company funded private medical insurance

• Healthcare cashback plan

• Employee assistance programme (including mental health support)

• Modern office space with onsite gym including access to free HIIT & stretch classes, games area, chill-out areas, book club, and more, when you visit our HQ in Cossington

#LI-Hybrid