Principal Software Engineer

About the Role

We are representing a confidential gaming technology organization in their search for a Principal Software Engineer based in Edinburgh. This is a senior technical leadership position where you will serve as a trusted technical voice within a large engineering organization, shaping architecture, setting standards, and solving the most complex technical challenges.

In this role, you will own the technical strategy for a critical engineering domain that includes payments and money movement, account management, geolocation, responsible gaming, promotions, rewards, loyalty programs, and personalized customer experiences. You will design systems that handle extreme peak loads during live events while maintaining compliance in a heavily regulated environment where auditability and availability are paramount.

You will work as part of a community of senior engineers, influencing technical direction across the organization, interacting with executive leadership, and mentoring highly experienced staff engineers. This position requires balancing long-term architectural vision with short-term business needs while maintaining the highest engineering standards.

Responsibilities

• Own and define the domain architecture, aligning senior engineers on target technical architecture and strategy
• Take ownership of operational excellence, including hands-on resolution of the most complex production issues and incident mitigation
• Write clean, simple code that implements complex paradigms in ways engineers at all levels can understand and contribute to
• Create prototypes and reference implementations that set patterns for the engineering community
• Influence delivery across teams, guiding staff engineers on technical tradeoff decisions between short-term and long-term needs
• Drive engineering best practices in operational excellence, security, and quality across the domain
• Collaborate with the principal engineering community to set organization-wide standards for AI usage across the software development lifecycle
• Shape engineering practices, backend and frontend architecture, tools, and processes across organizational boundaries
• Mentor and coach senior staff engineers, serving as a visible role model for the engineering community
• Communicate complex technical strategies to executives and translate business strategy into technical direction
• Participate in senior escalation support rather than primary on-call rotation

What We're Looking For

• Expert-level experience building and designing scalable, fault-tolerant, and highly available systems, including systems under extreme peak load that spike around live events
• Proven experience influencing technical direction across large engineering organizations (200+ engineers)
• Expert-level understanding of engineering design patterns and architectural approaches
• Deep, current, hands-on command of AI-assisted software development: agentic coding, spec-driven development workflows, and the context and tooling that enable them
• Strong experience with review, testing, and verification practices that maintain quality as code volume increases
• Proven track record taking an engineering organization past AI experimentation to measurable change in how software is built, including setting standards for where AI is and is not used
• Experience demonstrating real impact on throughput, quality, and security, particularly in regulated environments where auditability and data boundaries constrain AI usage
• Demonstrated ability to make pragmatic tradeoffs between short-term needs and long-term technical vision
• Ability to build trust and shared understanding with teams and engineers outside your direct reporting structure
• Deep experience in modern backend languages, both functional and object-oriented, including Java
• Demonstrated ability to raise operational excellence and best practices through influence and collaboration

How We Work with You

When you apply through Get A Job.ai, one of our experienced recruiters will review your profile and conduct an initial screening conversation. If there's a strong match, we will submit your candidacy to our client for consideration. Please do not contact the client directly—all communication and coordination will flow through our talent team to ensure the best experience for you throughout the process.

Pay

Compensation details will be discussed during the screening process with our recruiting team.

Equal Opportunity: Get A Job.ai is committed to inclusive hiring practices. We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds and provide reasonable accommodations throughout our recruitment process.