Principal Engineer (Backend)

About the Role
We're looking for a Principal Backend Engineer to take ownership of end-to-end delivery of highly complex, multi-team initiatives. This is a senior technical leadership role where you'll shape architecture, influence engineering strategy, and drive technical excellence across squads.
You'll work in a fast-paced, agile environment alongside product, engineering, and commercial teams as we continue building innovative solutions in the sports betting, gaming, and interactive entertainment industry.

What You'll Be Doing

• Take ownership of delivery across large-scale, cross-functional projects
• Drive architectural decisions and promote scalable, maintainable design
• Challenge the tech status quo and lead modernisation, automation, and innovation initiatives
• Build high-quality, reusable, and scalable backend systems
• Analyse system-wide dependencies, bottlenecks, and performance
• Define and implement engineering best practices, standards, and processes
• Lead design reviews and contribute to governance and architecture forums
• Balance priorities across technical debt, quality, and delivery timelines
• Champion security-first development and ensure robust controls in pipelines
• Collaborate with Product Owners and Engineering Leaders to define MVPs and solutions
• Mentor engineers, supporting their technical growth and development
• Play an active role in hiring and building high-performing engineering teams

What We're Looking For

Technical Skills

• Strong expertise in Java (plus exposure to Go, Node.js, or Python)
• Proven experience designing and building distributed systems
• Deep understanding of system design, OOP, and design patterns
• Experience building high-performance, low-latency, scalable systems
• Strong knowledge of microservices & monolith architectures
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, containerisation, Helm/Kustomize
• Strong knowledge of APIs and system integrations
• Experience with monitoring, logging, and performance optimisation
• Good understanding of application security (Auth, encryption, SAST/DAST)
• Familiarity with event-driven architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ, NATS)
• Experience with caching solutions (Redis, Hazelcast, etc.)
• Exposure to cloud platforms
• Understanding of Agile methodologies

Nice to Have

• Exposure to AI/ML or data engineering (ETL pipelines, analytics)
• Experience with technology strategy and governance
• Background in the betting, gaming, or entertainment industry

Why Join Us?

• Work on high-impact, large-scale systems
• Influence architectural direction and engineering standards
• Be part of a high-energy, fast-scaling tech environment
• Collaborate with top engineers and industry experts
• Opportunity to help build a market-leading product in a cutting-edge space

Guidant, Carbon60, Lorien & SRG - The Impellam Group Portfolio are acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.