Principal Engineer (Front-End)

Description

Principal Engineer (Front End) role in the Technology Engineering team within the CIO function of a digital insurer with over 4 million customers.

The company aims to become the largest and best insurer in the UK market and has invested heavily in data and technology in recent years.

The CIO team works on digital presence and customer engagement projects, and the role is highly visible, combining hands-on technical leadership, strategic influence and people development in a busy environment.

If you do not meet every point but think you have much of what is asked, the team encourages you to apply, even if you are not 100% sure.

Responsibilities

• Develop engineers through line management, mentoring, sponsorship and clear, constructive feedback.
• Take on the organisation's highest-priority business problems, resolve complex issues quickly and help the organisation prevent them from recurring.
• Provide strategic and technical input to improve project outcomes and shape the company's direction through high-impact delivery.
• Work with stakeholders to find gaps in the delivery pipeline and lead fixes that improve speed, reliability and consistency across the SDLC.
• Identify ways to reuse and extend existing platforms so that engineering investment goes further.
• Lead the Centre of Excellence for your domain by improving tooling, setting best practice and controls, and building continuous learning into the team.
• Act as a role model who holds high standards, links technical decisions to business impact and builds a high-performance engineering culture.

Requirements

• Strong transformational leadership: you influence decisions and introduce new processes that support business goals.
• Excellent mentoring and people development skills.
• Extensive experience in application and/or web development in an Agile environment.
• Strong experience with at least one Agile method (Scrum, Kanban or SAFe) and with tools such as Jira or Octane.
• Expert knowledge of cloud platforms.
• Advanced coding skills in React or React Native app development.
• Expert use of GitHub for source control.
• Strong understanding of build, release and deployment automation.
• Proven ability to design and integrate CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Azure DevOps or Jenkins.
• Deep experience with continuous integration platforms such as Azure DevOps, Jenkins or equivalent.
• Experience in these application domains: customer-facing web and mobile e-commerce, document templating and production systems, distributed n-tier architectures, web services and API-driven or service-oriented architectures, and operational reporting platforms.
• Desirable: experience with monitoring tools such as Grafana, Dynatrace or equivalent.
• Previous experience managing and developing technical teams, and thriving in a fast-paced environment while driving both people and technical excellence.

Conditions

The role is hybrid, with attendance at the Bexhill or Leicester office at least once a week and at quarterly departmental events, so you must live within a 90-minute commute of one of these offices.

Days in the office and at home are discussed with your recruiter.

No sponsorship is offered for this role.

Candidates undergo a thorough referencing process, including credit and criminal record checks.

Applications are welcome from all suitably skilled people regardless of gender, age, race, disability, ethnic background, religion or belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment or marital or family status, and reasonable adjustments are available during recruitment.

Benefits

• Salary based on experience, plus a car allowance, with pay reviewed each year.
• An annual 4Cs performance bonus open to all colleagues, usually paid in March and based on company performance against business goals and your personal performance.
• Life assurance at 4x salary and income protection, both at no extra cost, plus pension contributions matched up to 10%.
• A healthcare cash plan for everyday health costs, along with private healthcare, dental plans and discounted health assessments.
• Mental wellbeing support including the Thrive app, a 24/7 colleague assistance programme, in-house mental health first aiders, support groups and a dedicated support team.
• Cashback and price reductions at everyday shops and on the company's own products, fee-free independent mortgage advice and free financial wellbeing support.
• 27 days annual leave plus bank holidays, with the option to buy or sell one contracted week.
• Cycle to work and tech schemes, discounted and free onsite facilities, and social events throughout the year.