Principal Engineering Lead

TL;DR

Principal Engineering Lead (Backend/Architecture): Provide senior technical and organisational leadership across the Michelangelo workstream, shaping how customer-facing experiences are built, scaled, and evolved across hirify.global apps and website with an accent on architecture cohesion, dependency alignment, and experimentation-first delivery. Focus on defining technical direction across multiple teams, owning key architectural decisions for scalability and maintainability, and raising engineering standards for performance, reliability, testing, observability, and operational readiness.

Location: Our HQ in London

Company

hirify.global is an online fashion retailer.

What you will do

• Define and evolve technical direction across the app revamp workstream, ensuring architectural cohesion across customer-facing experiences while balancing delivery speed with long-term sustainability.
• Lead multiple teams by resolving complex dependencies, technical trade-offs, and delivery risks, while overseeing full-time and contractor engineers to ensure shared practices.
• Partner with Product, Design, Engineering Leadership, and Data to shape strategy, align roadmaps, and turn customer problems into measurable outcomes.
• Own and influence key architectural decisions across app, web, and supporting services to ensure scalable, maintainable solutions aligned with the broader platform direction.
• Embed experimentation-first delivery by championing A/B testing, measurement, and iteration for continuous validation and learning.
• Raise engineering standards across teams for performance, reliability, code quality, testing, observability, and operational readiness; coach and develop technical leaders.

Requirements

• Proven experience operating at Principal, Staff, or equivalent leadership level, setting technical direction across multiple domains/products or a broad technical domain.
• Strong back-end engineering and software architecture background, ideally in high-scale consumer products, with the ability to lead across cross-functional environments including mobile and web teams.
• Demonstrated experience defining architecture across a broad landscape, balancing short-term delivery with long-term platform health, maintainability, and scalability.
• Track record leading complex initiatives spanning multiple teams/disciplines, influencing without relying on direct authority and creating alignment across competing priorities.
• Strong understanding of experimentation, A/B testing, and data-informed decision making using metrics to validate ideas and guide iteration.
• Strong communication skills with senior and exec-level stakeholders, able to explain technical complexity clearly and influence direction constructively.

Culture & Benefits

• Employee discount and employee sample sales.
• 25 days paid annual leave plus an extra celebration day.
• Discretionary bonus scheme and private medical care scheme.
• Flexible benefits allowance and personalised learning opportunities.
• Summer hours: finish at 3pm on Fridays in June, July, and August.
• Shuttlebus service if based in the Leavesden office.