Principal Developer Competitive Salary Hybrid, Stockport 1x p/w

Pearson Carter are currently working with a fast-growing organisation operating across e-commerce, healthcare and digital platforms, who are looking to appoint a highly experienced Principal Developer to support their continued growth.

This is a broad, senior technical position offering the opportunity to influence architecture, infrastructure, security and AI adoption across multiple business areas. You will work closely with senior stakeholders and engineering teams, taking ownership of complex technical challenges while helping establish the foundations for future growth.

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Responsibilities:

• Take ownership of group-wide infrastructure, cloud governance, DNS management and technical security.
• Lead security remediation initiatives, addressing audit findings and improving access controls, endpoint security and overall infrastructure resilience.
• Oversee cloud infrastructure and legacy system migrations, ensuring platforms remain stable, secure and scalable.
• Support the performance, maintenance and optimisation of existing web platforms, including WordPress applications and associated databases.
• Review and guide technical decisions around payment gateways, REST APIs, integrations and secure data handling.
• Provide architectural guidance across multiple development teams, helping resolve complex backend, infrastructure and production issues.
• Drive the adoption of AI-assisted development, automation, RAG systems and MCP integrations to improve engineering productivity.
• Establish and maintain development standards, code review practices and shared tooling across engineering teams.
• Work closely with the IT Director and Engineering Manager to prioritise technical initiatives and deliver improvements across the business.
• Mentor senior developers and technical leads, sharing knowledge and helping raise engineering standards.
• Identify opportunities to improve internal tooling, communications systems and operational processes.
• Respond to critical technical incidents when required, implementing preventative measures to improve long-term reliability.

Experience:

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

Desirable Experience:

• Experience within 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 and deployment environments.
• Familiarity with Claude Enterprise, MCP servers and AI tooling governance.
• Experience with monitoring, incident management and developer productivity tooling.
• Previous experience mentoring senior engineers or helping a technical function grow.

Salary

Competitive salary, dependent on experience. There may also be scope to discuss meaningful equity for the right candidate.

Location

The role operates on a hybrid basis, with one day per week in the Stockport office and remote working for the remainder of the week.

Benefits include private health insurance, a company pension scheme, staff discounts and access to AI development tooling. The role also offers significant technical ownership and the opportunity to help shape a growing engineering function.

Applications are welcome from experienced Principal Developers, Senior Software Engineers or Technical Leads with a strong combination of software engineering, infrastructure, security and architectural experience.

How to Apply

Please apply ASAP with your CV to be considered for this position. You can also get in touch with me on [email protected] or 0191 406 6111.

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