Principal Developer

£600 per day (Inside IR35)
6 Month Contract
Remote Working | Occasional Travel to London

We’re looking for a Principal Developer to join a major engineering programme delivering large-scale, cloud-native systems within AWS.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role suited to an experienced engineer who enjoys remaining close to the code while helping shape technical direction across multiple teams. You’ll play a key role in designing, building and supporting resilient microservices-based solutions, contributing to architectural decisions, technical governance and live service operations.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Leading the design and development of large-scale cloud-native applications.
• Delivering distributed, event-driven microservices-based solutions.
• Providing technical leadership and direction across multiple teams.
• Collaborating with architects, security specialists and senior stakeholders.
• Acting as a technical authority, supporting complex technical decision-making.
• Driving engineering standards, quality assurance and best practice.
• Contributing to architecture, solution design and technical governance.
• Supporting production services, incident management and live operations.
• Ensuring solutions are resilient, observable and scalable.
• Delivering complex implementation work while maintaining strong stakeholder engagement.
• Producing and maintaining technical documentation.
• Supporting the continuous improvement of engineering capability and delivery processes.

Essential Skills

Java & Software Engineering

• Strong commercial Java development experience.
• Spring Boot.
• Maven.
• REST and SOAP services.
• Experience delivering large-scale enterprise systems handling high transaction volumes.
• Strong understanding of software engineering best practices and modern development approaches.

AWS & Cloud-Native Development

• AWS.
• S3.
• SQS.
• SNS.
• Step Functions.
• EventBridge.
• Event Sourcing.
• Experience delivering distributed and asynchronous systems.
• Cloud-native application development.

Architecture & Engineering

• Microservices architecture.
• Event-driven architecture.
• Distributed systems design.
• Building resilient and observable systems.
• Architecture and solution design experience.

Containers & Platform Engineering

• Docker.
• Docker Compose.
• Kubernetes.
• Containerised application delivery and support.

Leadership & Operations

• Technical leadership across multiple teams.
• Technical governance.
• Architectural decision support.
• Stakeholder engagement.
• Production support.
• Incident management.
• Live service operations.
• Experience acting as a technical authority.

Security

• Active SC Clearance.

Desirable Skills

• Python.
• Bash.
• Node.js.
• TypeScript.
• LocalStack.
• AWS AppConfig.
• AWS API Gateway.
• Lambda Authorizer.
• Terraform.
• Helm.
• Kafka / AWS MSK.
• Secrets Management.
• Authentication and Authorisation.
• Certificate Management.

Ideal Candidate

You’ll be an experienced Principal Developer with a strong background in Java and AWS, capable of leading complex technical delivery while remaining hands-on. You’ll have experience working on large-scale distributed systems, influencing architectural decisions and supporting live services within complex engineering environments.

Reasonable Adjustments:

Respect and equality are core values to us. We are proud of the diverse and inclusive community we have built, and we welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and perspectives. Our success is driven by our people, united by the spirit of partnership to deliver the best resourcing solutions for our clients.

If you need any help or adjustments during the recruitment process for any reason, please let us know when you apply or talk to the recruiters directly so we can support you.