Job description
Waracle are looking for a Principal Developer to join our world-class digital technology consultancy and home to a diverse, smart, curious, and ambitious community of specialists in technology-driven transformation. We work with ambitious clients to help them solve their biggest business and customer challenges. We help our clients to innovate and create intelligent digital products and services. We thrive on complex challenges and deliver business-critical IT transformation projects, moving seamlessly from strategy, design, and delivery to operations.
This is a Hybrid role working from our London office 2 days a week.
Shape the Future of Digital Innovation
As a Principal Developer, you will act as a strategic technical leader, guiding and shaping robust architectures, data strategies, and cloud-native environments across multiple squads and collaborative programmes. In this role, you will champion technical excellence, making thoughtful choices that balance cost, security, performance, and user experience to help Waracle scale and deliver high-performance, world-class products. If you are a collaborative leader who thrives on mentoring talent, fostering inclusive engineering communities, and navigating complex technical landscapes with empathy and pragmatism, we would love to welcome you to our team.
Duties of This Role
Reporting to the Head of Engineering, your role will cover:
- Solving Complex Technical Challenges: Partner closely with client technical and business stakeholders at all levels, gaining a deep understanding of their technology estates to advise on impactful, world-class digital solutions.
- Technical Excellence & Delivery: Shape architectures across multiple squads; select tools and frameworks to scale across clients while optimising for cost, security, performance, and scalability.
- Collaboration & Stakeholder Management: Act as a trusted advisor to clients on technical strategy and roadmaps, translating complex technical concepts into clear, accessible communication for senior stakeholders.
- Leadership & Community Cultivation: Mentor Lead and Senior Engineers, foster and grow our engineering community of practice, and ensure cross-team alignment on technical standards.
- Culture & Knowledge Sharing: Define and evolve Waracle’s technical standards while contributing to our shared body of knowledge through lessons learned, thought leadership, and good practices.
What you'll bring
- Research shows that women and underrepresented groups often apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. At Waracle, we hire for potential, passion, and a collaborative mindset just as much as current experience. If you share our values and believe you can excel in this role, we strongly encourage you to apply—even if you don't tick every single box
- Architectural Leadership: Proven experience designing, documenting, and scaling complex back-end architectures, distributed systems, microservices, and database designs (SQL and other technologies) within cloud-native environments—particularly Azure (with a focus on API management, maintenance, and scaling).
- Technical Direction & Delivery Ownership: Strong leadership capability to set clear technical direction, maintain a dedicated ownership mindset, and foster high-standard outcomes across complex enterprise projects.
- Consultative Communication: Excellent communication and influencing skills, with a demonstrated ability to navigate complex client organisations, support diverse stakeholders, and pragmatically balance commercial constraints with high technical standards.
- Team Mentorship & Growth: A proven track record of mentoring, developing, and aligning senior engineers and technical leaders to foster a collaborative culture of continuous learning and psychological safety.
- Modern SDLC Innovation: A pragmatic, forward-thinking understanding of leveraging and applying AI acceleration tools within the Software Development Life Cycle to optimise engineering practices.
Recruitment process
You can expect an initial call with your dedicated Talent Acquisition Partner, who will chat with you about Waracle, what you are looking for in a new position, the salary for the role, notice period, and benefits. After that, you’ll be invited to a two-stage interview process where you will have an opportunity to find out more about the role and showcase your skills and experience. Your Talent Attraction Partner will guide and support you through the whole process right up to your first day with us
Our Benefits
We believe in supporting our team, inside and outside of work. Here's a glimpse of what you can expect:
You'll receive 27 days of annual leave, plus 8 bank holidays, totalling 35 days of holiday to unwind and pursue your passions.
Plan for retirement with our company-matched 5% pension contribution. For added peace of mind, we also offer a Death in Service benefit, providing 2 x your annual salary for your loved ones.
Our Medicash Health Cash Plans help cover everyday healthcare costs, complemented by an Employee Assistance Programme for confidential support, and Group Sickness Cover for peace of mind.
We champion hybrid working, providing a home office setup budget to ensure you're comfortable and productive wherever you are.
Invest in yourself with access to Udemy Business and a dedicated learning and development budget for continuous growth.
Make the most of our Cycle to Work Scheme, and enjoy exclusive gym and retail discounts.
Our enhanced parental leave policies include support for fertility journeys, recognising diverse family needs.
We foster a vibrant culture with regular fun meet-ups and lunch on us in the office once a month. You'll also have the opportunity to make a local impact through Spirit of Waracle, our initiative for getting involved in charitable causes locally, building strong team bonds and giving back.
Our values
To make the world a better place through impactful software
We take pride in delivering high quality work and seeing the impact it has. We are curious, proactive, and always learning; continuously improving ourselves and our skills. We strive for excellence in everything we do. We see every opportunity as a chance to raise the bar - for Waracle, our clients, and for our own professional growth.
We succeed together: whether we’re leading, supporting or learning. We lead with empathy, working as a unified team to understand and appreciate other people’s perspectives and experiences. This commitment to one another empowers everyone to do their best work and reach their full potential. We build trust, celebrate every contribution, and create a space where everyone has the opportunity to shine.
We have big goals, but we don’t try to do everything. We know there are a limited number of hours in a day, so we make every one of them count. We accomplish this by regularly pausing to assess the potential impact of our work, prioritising what matters most and then acting with purpose.
We are transparent in how we think and act. We seek and share context, give and accept feedback, and communicate openly. We take full ownership of what we deliver as individuals and as a team, and hold ourselves accountable. This openness and accountability gives us the clarity and purpose to deliver at our best.
We love what we do and find the fun in each day, celebrating our shared successes and the satisfaction of doing hard work well. We’re in this together, creating space for connection, laughter, and fun. When we look after our clients and each other, and do work we’re proud of, we go home happy.
Frequently-asked questions
Here are some of the things that people tend to ask about working at Waracle.
Absolutely! At Waracle, we welcome both permanent and contract applicants. Each job posting indicates if it's open to contract applications. We offer a diverse range of projects, both within and outside IR35 regulations, catering to various preferences and expertise levels.
We work on a Hybrid working model and offer flexible working hours. We're spread across 4 vibrant UK offices, but our teamwork isn't confined to those spaces, it's all about collaboration! While using the office is encouraged for our teams to work together, each of us has a home office setup, relishing the freedom of hybrid workstyles. As of now, remote work outside the UK isn't part of our standard practice.
We always want to hear from talented people, join our talent pool 👇 and we'll contact you when a new opportunity becomes available.
Equal Opportunities
We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, gender, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.
We are not accepting applications from recruitment agencies.
