Principal Engineer

Salary Competitive plus Bonus and Benefits

Location Hybrid - Slough/London

This is a Permanent, Full Time vacancy that will close in x days at xx:xx BST.

The Vacancy

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer (Level 6) to join our thriving business!

This role is a new key role in the IRIS Engineering Organisation and is one of the keystones in the delivery of World-Class Customer Products, Developer experience and the advancement of our technology.

As a Principal Software Engineer, your world is being embedded or supporting the teams where the hardest work is happening at any given time, helping them deliver good quality software with predictable velocity, helping them break through when they're getting blocked, helping them get better over time, oiling the wheels of inter-team communication. Coaching, challenging and guiding the Engineering teams on great practices, processes and implementation.

What will you be doing?

• Own the direction of the engineering culture at the organisational level.
• Drive the usage and best practices of AI Tools such as Devin, Replit, Co-Pilot, Cursor.
• Work with a high level of autonomy regarding both focus areas and impact mechanisms.
• Demonstrate and educate industry recognised engineering Global Cloud Platform SAAS "best in class" practices/frameworks E.g. Highly scalable, resilient, extendable service and application designs.
• Influence and drive the technical strategic direction of the platform & estate with engineering Leadership (VP's, Directors, Managers and Architects).
• Promote the IRIS technical culture externally.
• Nurture/Grow the internal technical culture of IRIS.
• Drive harmonisation of best practices and processes across the organisation.
• Lead new ways of thinking and new engineering initiatives across the org without defined authority.

What we are seeking

• Experience developing and supporting engineers in their technical and career progression.
• Clear experience showcasing impact of engineering delivery.
• Demonstrable creation and changes to applications using AI Tools.
• Ability to work with a high level of autonomy.
• Demonstrable knowledge of architectural concepts.
• Understanding of cloud-native technologies and architecture.
• Advanced experience with engineering processes such as CI/CD, Continuous Delivery and Agile.
• Deep knowledge and understanding of core advanced topics Eg: async, http, memory management, performance optimisation, profiling and debugging applications.
• Significant experience working across multiple tech stacks.
• Positive approach to problem solving.
• Experience of working at enterprise level scale/throughput and reliability.
• Demonstrable experience of taking accountability and Technical leadership and ownership of a Domain/Large scale problem.

About IRIS

As one of the UK's largest privately held software companies, IRIS Software Group exists to simplify the lives of businesses, schools and organisations.

IRIS provides software solutions and services that substantially enhance operational compliance, efficiency and accuracy, empowering the users of our technology to look forward with certainty and confidence.

Over 4 million parents use our software to connect with their child's school, 18% of UK employees are paid via an IRIS payroll solution, 50,000 SMEs use IRIS cloud bookkeeping and 21,000 firms rely on us for legislative compliance.

Our operational software is the invisible but essential beating heart of our customers' businesses, supporting them in a range of objectives, from maintaining legislative compliance to boosting engagement with stakeholders and enhancing productivity.

It's vital these mission-critical functions work first time, every time.

That's why IRIS helps businesses run the tough stuff, stay compliant and get operational tasks done right first time, every time - so they can focus on productivity and growth.

IRIS is a company built on hiring the best people; our people are our greatest assets.

They enable us to be the innovative, market-leading, and high-performing company that we are today.

We're delighted to be certified as a Great Place to Work and one of the UK's Best Workplaces for Women.

These accolades confirm that our employees have a consistently positive experience at IRIS, with the certifications considering employee wellbeing, diversity and inclusion, trust in management, effective communication and recognition/reward.

IRIS is committed to engaging, rewarding and empowering our employees, and this is central to what we do.

This is why we work to create an environment where employees feel like they are part of a team.

We believe in creating a culture of engagement and reward to develop your potential and offer long-term career success. We do this by:

Supporting our managers to be great leaders, providing inspirational management resources and offering dedicated management development training.

Rewarding individual excellence through dedicated initiatives and Employee Awards for demonstrating our values.

Offering regular training and development programmes tailored to each employee's development needs and providing a commitment to a 'learning culture' which shares knowledge, best practice and our long-standing expertise between employees.

We're committed to a culture of continuous improvement and listen to our employees via regular feedback sessions and employee engagement surveys.

Our employees love the colleagues they work with. We promote a positive environment where our people feel comfortable, make friends and support each other.