Principal Engineer

As a Principal Engineer, you are a senior technical leader responsible for setting technical direction across multiple squads and shaping the long-term architecture of the platform. You will work closely with Engineering, Product, and Design leadership to ensure Opus 2’s technology strategy supports business goals, scales with customer demand, and maintains the highest standards of quality, security, and reliability. 

You will operate beyond a single squad, influencing engineering practices, architectural decisions, and delivery approaches across the organisation. While you may lead the most complex initiatives hands-on, your primary impact comes from technical leadership, mentoring, and strategic guidance rather than day-to-day execution alone. 

What you'll be doing 

• Define and evolve the technical vision and architecture across multiple product areas. 

• Lead the design and delivery of high-impact, cross-squad initiatives and platform-level capabilities. 

• Act as a trusted technical advisor to Engineering Managers, Staff Engineers, and 

 Product leadership 

• Establish and promote engineering standards, patterns, and best practices across teams. 

• Identify systemic technical risks and proactively drive solutions before they impact delivery or customers. 

• Influence roadmap decisions by balancing business needs, technical constraints, and long-term platform health. 

• Champion modern engineering practices including CI/CD, observability, automated testing, and secure-by-design development. 

• Drive the effective and responsible use of AI across the SDLC to improve quality, delivery speed, and developer productivity. 

• Mentor and coach senior engineers and staff engineers, raising the overall technical bar of the organisation. 

What success looks like 

• Opus 2 has a clear, scalable, and resilient technical architecture aligned with business strategy. 

• Large, complex initiatives are delivered successfully across squads with minimal technical friction. 

• Engineering teams consistently make better architectural and design decisions due to your guidance. 

• Technical debt is actively managed and reduced through deliberate, visible strategy.  

• Senior engineers grow in confidence and capability through your mentorship and leadership. 

• Engineering standards and practices improve measurably across the organisation. 

Requirements

What we're looking for in you 

• Deep expertise in distributed systems, multi-tenant SaaS platforms, and API-first architectures. 

• Strong full-stack background with a focus on TypeScript; experience with Java and/or Go is highly desirable. 

• Proven experience designing and evolving systems on AWS, including serverless architectures; familiarity with Kubernetes. 

• Frontend and backend framework experience, including React and Spring. 

• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams, not just within a single squad. 

• Excellent mentoring, coaching, and technical communication skills. 

• Strong understanding of scalability, performance, security, and operational reliability. 

• Typically 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including senior technical leadership roles. 

Benefits

Working for Opus 2 

Opus 2 is a global leader in legal software and services, trusted partner of the world’s leading legal teams. All our achievements are underpinned by our unique culture where our people are our most valuable asset. Working at Opus 2, you’ll receive: 

• Contributory pension plan. 

• 33 days annual holidays, flexible working, and length of service entitlement. 

• Health Insurance. 

• Loyalty Share Scheme. 

• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity. 

• Employee Assistance Programme. 

• Electric Vehicle Salary Sacrifice. 

• Cycle to Work Scheme. 

• Calm and Mindfulness sessions. 

• A day of leave to volunteer for charity and an active CSR team raising money towards a company charity. 

• Regular Company Social Events. 

• Yearly Development Retreat.