Principal Software Engineer (Data, AI-First)

TL;DR

Principal Software Engineer (Data, AI-First): Drive architecture and technical strategy for the Data domain across the full journey from transactional sources to analytical insight, with an accent on OLTP/OLAP foundations and AI-first data enablement. Focus on designing target architectures, leading end-to-end data lifecycle ownership, and architecting LLM orchestration (including RAG) and real-time inference at scale.

Location: Remote

Salary: £100,000 - £120,000

Company

hirify.global builds MIS and school management tools that help schools use data to improve progress and staff wellbeing.

What you will do

• Define and evangelise target architectures bridging transactional, analytical, and AI systems while keeping data a competitive advantage.
• Own the end-to-end data lifecycle: OLTP schema design and migrations, OLAP governance, platform, and analytics.
• Partner with Technical Leads to guide feature delivery, pay down tech debt, and improve architecture (hands-on without necessarily coding).
• Lead the shift to an AI-first way of working by architecting data foundations that enable AI in products.
• Architect infrastructure for LLM orchestration, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and real-time model inference at scale.
• Run architectural reviews and mentor Technical Leads/Senior Engineers to raise engineering excellence and reliability, security, and compliance.

Requirements

• Extensive experience overseeing data architecture with a track record delivering iterative outcomes across one or more OLAP domains.
• Strong data modelling skills (e.g., Star, Medallion) and experience with distributed, cloud-native data systems (e.g., Snowflake).
• Experience building and leveraging unstructured data across disparate systems to enable product development.
• Practical knowledge of DataOps principles, including CI/CD for data and orchestration of complex pipelines (e.g., AWS, Debezium, Git, Infrastructure as Code).
• Commercial knowledge of data security standards (encryption at rest/transit) and relevant compliance laws.
• Experience with platform cost optimization for SaaS spend using forecasting models.

Nice to have

• AI/ML engineering & MLOps experience (model deployment/serving and monitoring).
• Experience with federated learning and/or privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs).
• LLM Ops experience, including prompt engineering at scale and token cost optimization.

Culture & Benefits

• Flexible working is supported and discussed with candidates.
• 32 days holiday (25 annual leave + 7 company-wide days) plus Bank Holidays.
• Comprehensive wellbeing support including AIG Smart Health (24/7 virtual GP, mental health support, counselling, health checks).
• Private dental insurance with Bupa and life assurance (3x annual salary).
• Professional development budget (CPD courses, memberships, upskilling resources).
• Enhanced maternity/adoption and paternity pay, plus volunteer day and dog-friendly offices.

Hiring process

• Phone screen.
• 1st stage interview.
• 2nd stage interview.