Consulting​/Principal Software Engineer

Consulting/Principal Software Engineer

The Sci Val Development Team is a cross‑functional group comprising Frontend, Backend, and Quality Engineers who work closely together. The team collaborates closely with UX and Product to design, build, and deliver high‑quality features efficiently and reliably. Sci Val is a data‑driven product that provides academic and research metrics to customers, enabling insight, analysis, and informed decision‑making. The team focuses on building scalable, reliable solutions while continuously improving usability, performance, and data accuracy.

Acts as the technical lead and facilitator for a cross‑functional squad. In addition to hands‑on design, coding, and/or test automation, this role sets technical direction, shapes delivery plans, drives quality strategy, and unblocks the team through facilitation—not line management. Partners closely with Product, Architecture, QE, SRE/Platform, and adjacent squads to deliver reliable, secure, and observable software.

• Serve as the first line of technical escalation for the squad’s services/components.
• Facilitate team ceremonies (refinement, technical grooming, sprint planning, design reviews) with a focus on flow and outcomes.
• Translate product objectives into sound technical designs and testable acceptance criteria; decompose epics into implementable stories.
• Design and implement complex features; complete complex bug fixes and performance improvements.
• Define and uphold the Definition of Ready/Done, including code quality, automated test coverage, security checks, and observability.
• Establish/maintain CI/CD pipelines, quality gates, and sensible branching/release strategies.
• Drive a pragmatic quality strategy: test pyramid balance, contract tests, data management, environments, and non‑functional testing.
• Partner with TIO on SLOs, alerting, runbooks, incident response, and post‑incident learning.
• Mentor through pairing, code/test reviews, and architecture discussions (no performance management duties).
• Document designs and decisions (e.g., ADRs), and keep technical docs and runbooks current.
• Coordinate dependencies and integration with other squads and external partners; surface risks with clear options/trade‑offs.
• Track and improve key delivery/quality indicators (lead time, change fail rate, MTTR, escaped defects, performance budgets).

• Around 7+ years of experience in Software Engineering, Quality Engineering, or related roles, contributing to complex systems in production.
• Experience leading through influence, such as technical leadership, feature ownership, or community/guild participation across design, delivery, and operations.
• A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience gained through work, training, or self‑directed learning.
• Demonstrated depth in at least one technical domain, such as distributed systems, data platforms, or high‑scale web or mobile applications.
• Comfortable collaborating with cross‑functional teams, external partners, and vendors in inclusive and respectful environments.
• Strong understanding of Agile and Lean practices, including backlog refinement, breaking work into incremental deliverables, and risk‑aware planning.
• Experience defining and applying test strategies, including test pyramid principles, shift‑left practices, CI/CD quality checks, and release readiness.
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages or stacks, such as Java/JVM, JavaScript/Type Script, C#/.NET, Python, C/C++, or SQL.
• Experience working in Linux or Windows environments.
• Familiarity with relational and non‑relational databases, including data modelling and performance tuning.
• Experience or familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, containerised environments, cloud fundamentals, and observability tools (logs, metrics, traces).
• Working knowledge of secure coding practices, performance analysis, reliability concepts (such as SLOs and error budgets), and participation in incident response and learning reviews.
• Development‑focused experience in API and service design, domain modelling, concurrency, resilience patterns, refactoring, and code quality, or…