Principal Software Engineering Specialist

Salary: £140,337.6 - 140,337.6 per year

Requirements:

• Ability to operate at engineering leadership or architecture level
• Strong experience designing Kubernetes platforms, not just operating them
• Proven experience integrating Kubernetes with CI/CD systems
• Experience with multi-team platform design and governance
• Desirable: Experience with GitOps tools such as ArgoCD or Flux
• Desirable: Experience with cloud-native build tooling such as BuildKit or Kaniko
• Desirable: Familiarity with enterprise-scale engineering environments
• Ideally five years of experience
• STEM qualification, CEng, Chartered IT Professional (CITP), or equivalent

Responsibilities:

• Help define our architectural direction for Kubernetes platforms
• Shape the architectural approach, design decisions, and engineering standards underpinning our future CI capabilities
• Work closely with engineering leadership to introduce containerisation in a way that supports immediate delivery needs and longer-term strategic goals, including multi-team adoption, cost efficiency, and developer experience
• Support the immediate project by integrating US Common Infrastructure Services (CIS) into CI
• Following that integration, deliver CI capability within CIIS

Technologies:

• ArgoCD
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• GitOps
• Support
• Kubernetes
• DevOps

More:

We are offering a Principal Engineer – Software Engineering (Specialist Software) role with one of the UKs leading defence organisations. The role is based in Frimley and operates on a hybrid basis, with two to three days per week on site. This is an initial 12-month contract, paying £67.47 per hour via umbrella, inside IR35.

last updated 40 week of 2026