Principal Software Developer

Role: Principal Software Engineer Salary: £70,000–£80,000 DOE Location: Cambridge We’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer to lead the design and optimisation of mission-critical communication systems. You’ll shape technical direction, ensure performance and scalability, and mentor a talented development team within a growing technology business. Key Responsibilities Lead the architecture and development of high-performance, secure systems using C#/.NET Build low-latency, scalable applications for real-time communication and data handling Define and implement coding standards, CI/CD pipelines and best practices Resolve complex technical issues to maintain system reliability Guide and mentor engineers to support continuous improvement Skills & Experience Required Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or similar 10+ years’ experience with C# and .NET (Core/5+) Strong background in scalable, distributed systems (microservices) Experience with messaging and data technologies (Kafka, RabbitMQ, gRPC, TCP/IP) Skilled in performance tuning, concurrency and multithreading Solid understanding of security for critical systems Confident technical leadership and problem-solving skills Familiar with UI frameworks such as WPF and patterns like MVVM, MVP or MVC Desirable Experience planning and managing software projects Agile Scrum background Familiarity with Docker, Kotlin/Java and CI/CD tools Keywords C#, .NET, Microservices, Distributed Systems, Kafka, RabbitMQ, CI/CD, WPF, Agile, Docker, Kotlin