Principal Engineer

The role

A Principal Engineer will set technical direction and evolve engineering practices across multiple product areas. You will manage the AWS relationship, lead AI adoption for software engineering, and develop senior engineers.

What you will do

• Set technical strategy across multiple product areas
• Identify and resolve cross-cutting architectural risks
• Set engineering standards, architectural patterns, and documentation norms
• Raise reliability, observability, and security bars
• Monitor LLM usage and lead AI for software engineering innovation
• Develop staff engineers and technical leads
• Own the AWS relationship including architecture reviews and early access programmes
• Represent Motorway at AWS summits, conferences, and meetups

Required qualifications

• Ten years or more in software engineering
• Several years operating at Staff or Principal level
• Track record of setting technical direction across several teams or product areas
• Exceptional AWS expertise in serverless, containers, networking, identity and data services
• Strong grounding in API and identity architecture: OAuth 2.0, OIDC, PKCE, JWT, and IAM patterns
• Experience setting observability and reliability standards and running incident practice
• Comfort across the stack reading or writing code in most languages
• Record of developing senior engineers into technical leaders
• Practical experience building with LLMs and agents in production
• Strong public speaker with a track record of presenting at conferences or summits
• Ability to write specs, architecture decision records, and strategy documents

Nice to have

• Create clarity in situations where no obvious technical path exists
• Challenge the status quo with evidence and worked alternatives
• Argue for the simplest architecture that meets the requirement
• Carry a pattern library of production failures and over-engineered systems
• Want the stage rather than tolerate it
• Enjoy making the engineers around you better
• Stay curious about new tools and honest about which ones are worth adopting

Benefits

• Great work-life balance
• London office location with regular social events, office drinks and free snacks
• Hybrid work schedule with 2 days per week in our Central London office
• Stock options
• Pension scheme with NEST
• Budget for books, courses, conferences, etc
• Opt-in comprehensive health insurance through BUPA including dental care and fitness discounts
• Cycle to work scheme
• One paid volunteering day a year
• 6 months full paid maternity leave
• 4 weeks paternity leave
• Workplace nursery scheme

About the company

Motorway is the UK's largest online car-selling platform. It connects private sellers directly with over 8,000 dealers nationwide.