Principal Engineer (AI)

Location: Hybrid project in Lisbon or Porto, Portugal, with 2 days per week on-site

Company

hirify.global delivers consulting projects focused on software engineering, architecture and technology enablement.

What you will do

• Define and drive the React Native technology roadmap, improving mobile application performance, stability, security and release processes.
• Provide cross-stack technical leadership across frontend, mobile, backend, APIs, integrations, data, cloud, CI/CD, observability and production operations.
• Lead technical discovery, engineering spikes, design reviews and reference implementations for complex or high-risk initiatives.
• Strengthen clean architecture, Domain-Driven Design, secure coding, automated testing, trunk-based development, infrastructure as code and technical debt management.
• Coach Tech Leads and engineers through pairing, design sessions, code reviews, workshops and communities of practice.
• Advance API-first, event-driven architecture, security by design, observability, resilience, recoverability, operability and FinOps practices.

Requirements

• Proven experience as a Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, Senior Tech Lead or equivalent senior individual contributor.
• Strong frontend and mobile engineering expertise, including React, modern web architecture, accessibility and performance; production React Native experience is a strong differentiator.
• Demonstrable full-stack experience spanning user experience, client applications, services, integrations, data and cloud operations.
• Experience influencing multiple teams without direct management authority and delivering in complex enterprise environments with security, auditability, resilience and regulatory constraints.
• Evidence of introducing or scaling standards, reusable patterns or developer enablement capabilities.
• Expertise in at least one backend stack, preferably .NET; Java or Node.js are also relevant.
• Strong experience with REST, OpenAPI, gateways, asynchronous messaging, Kafka, Microsoft Azure, containers, Kubernetes, serverless, infrastructure as code, Git, CI/CD, GitHub, Azure DevOps or Jira, and SonarQube.
• Strong quality and operations experience covering unit, integration, contract, end-to-end and performance testing, observability, incident diagnosis, secure operations and resilience.
• Mandatory AI-SDLC experience with concrete delivery examples: hands-on use of AI coding assistants or agentic coding tools; use of AI for specifications, testing, refactoring, reviews, documentation or incident analysis; validation controls and guardrails; measurable impact on delivery performance, quality, rework or developer productivity; and judgment about when human control is required.

Nice to have

• Experience in financial services, payments, credit, banking or another regulated industry.
• Experience with customer-facing digital channels and high-volume transactional systems.
• Experience with platform engineering and internal developer platforms.
• Working to strong experience with relational and NoSQL stores, data modelling, operational data and event streams.

Culture & Benefits

• Individual contributor role with cross-team influence and no direct people-management responsibility.
• Collaboration with Tech Leads, Architects, Engineering Management, Product, Quality Engineering, Security, Data and Platform teams.
• Hands-on working style combining strategic direction, technical credibility, practical delivery and clear communication.
• Emphasis on security, transparency, traceability, accountability and appropriate human validation in AI use.