Principal Developer (AI)

Location: Hybrid, with one day per week in the Stockport, United Kingdom office and remote working for the remainder of the week.

Salary: £60,000–£90,000 per annum, dependent on experience; meaningful equity may also be discussed.

Company

hirify.global is an IT recruitment company working with a fast-growing organisation operating across e-commerce, healthcare and digital platforms.

What you will do

• Own group-wide infrastructure, cloud governance, DNS management and technical security.
• Lead security remediation, access-control improvements, endpoint security and infrastructure resilience initiatives.
• Oversee cloud infrastructure and legacy-system migrations, maintaining stable, secure and scalable platforms.
• Support and optimise WordPress applications, databases and existing web platforms.
• Guide decisions on payment gateways, REST APIs, integrations, webhooks and secure data handling.
• Provide architectural guidance, resolve backend and production issues, drive AI-assisted development and automation, establish engineering standards, and mentor senior developers and technical leads.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of professional software development experience, including strong backend and systems-level knowledge.
• Experience across mixed technology stacks, ideally including PHP/WordPress and TypeScript/Node.js or comparable technologies.
• Strong knowledge of security architecture, authentication, authorisation, access controls, DNS and email security.
• Experience managing AWS or GCP cloud infrastructure, server administration, infrastructure migrations, infrastructure as code and cloud governance.
• Experience with payment gateway integrations, webhooks, secure transaction processing, REST APIs, system architecture and integration design.
• Experience diagnosing performance issues and optimising databases and web applications.
• Practical experience with AI development tools, LLMs, RAG systems or automation frameworks.
• Ability to work autonomously, manage competing priorities and resolve complex technical problems.
• Strong communication skills for explaining architectural decisions and technical risks to non-technical stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience in healthcare, financial services or another regulated environment.
• Knowledge of GDPR, audit requirements and secure handling of sensitive data.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, deployment environments, monitoring, incident management and developer productivity tooling.
• Familiarity with Claude Enterprise, MCP servers and AI tooling governance.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers or helping a technical function grow.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid working with one office day per week in Stockport.
• Private health insurance and a company pension scheme.
• Staff discounts and access to AI development tooling.
• Significant technical ownership and the opportunity to shape a growing engineering function.

Hiring process

• Apply as soon as possible with a CV to be considered.
• Applications are welcomed from experienced Principal Developers, Senior Software Engineers or Technical Leads with strong software engineering, infrastructure, security and architectural experience.