Location
Central London (Hybrid - 3 days per week on client site)

Hours
Contract basis, full-time hours

Salary
Competitive, commensurate with experience

About the Role
We are seeking an experienced Principal Engineer to join us on a contract basis. This hybrid role requires presence on the client site in Central London three days per week. You will define and drive the technical strategy, architecture, and engineering standards across the Personalisation domain. Your responsibilities will include designing and delivering scalable systems supporting personalisation, search, recommendations, and ML-powered features. You will partner closely with Product, Data Science, and Design teams to deliver customer-centric solutions, lead and influence technical decision-making across multiple teams and platforms, mentor senior engineers, and improve engineering quality, reliability, and productivity through best practices, tooling, and platform enhancements.

Experience
- Proven technical leadership with strong expertise in Java and Python
- Extensive experience with large-scale production systems
- Strong background working with Machine Learning systems and collaborating with Data Science teams
- Skilled in system design and architecture to deliver scalable, high-quality solutions
- Experience working across cross-functional environments with multiple stakeholders

About you
- Passionate about growing others and driving engineering excellence
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence technical and business decisions at all levels

Qualifications
- Relevant technical qualifications or equivalent experience preferred but not mandatory