Principal Software Engineer (Python, AI)

Salary: £22,000 - 57,000 per year

Requirements:

• Principal-level track record at scale.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 3 years operating at Staff or Principal Engineer level in an organization of 100+ engineers.
• Experience leading large, complex platform or AI initiatives where you were the decision-maker, not a contributor.
• Deep, opinionated AWS platform expertise.
• Experience designing multi-account AWS architectures and making the call on when serverless is the wrong choice.
• Fluency with Infrastructure as Code, with Terraform or CDK preferred.
• Strong views on observability, resilience, and security, translated into org-wide patterns.
• Production AI systems experience, including shipping AI-enabled systems such as RAG pipelines, agentic frameworks, or LLM orchestration into production.
• Experience defining and implementing AI governance in real production environments, including bias and privacy checks in pipelines, audit-ready monitoring, and AI usage policies.
• Proven track record designing and shipping RESTful APIs and backend platform components using Node.js/TypeScript.
• Ability to understand frontend concerns well enough to set effective API contracts for product teams.
• Strong org-level communication and influence skills, including aligning stakeholders on complex technical decisions, running architecture forums, and mentoring other senior technical leaders.

Responsibilities:

• Shape engineering strategy with broad organizational impact across multiple teams and products.
• Drive platform evolution by identifying cross-cutting pain points and leading the design of secure, scalable, reusable solutions built on AWS and modern serverless and microservice patterns.
• Lead architectural discussions and design reviews, making trade-offs around performance, security, reliability, and maintainability while aligning teams with competing priorities.
• Own AI architectural decisions end to end, designing AI-enabled systems with built-in governance, monitoring, and regulatory readiness.
• Define where AI adds genuine value and where it does not.
• Act as our AI thought leader by educating engineering teams on model behavior, agentic systems, and responsible AI practices.
• Raise the overall maturity of how we design and deploy AI.
• Mentor and stretch senior and staff engineers, building technical leadership depth across the organisation and maintaining a high bar for engineering standards.

Technologies:

• AI
• API
• AWS
• Backend
• Frontend
• LLM
• RAG
• Security
• Serverless
• Terraform
• TypeScript
• NodeJS
• Cloud
• Support
• Python
• React

More:

Diligent is the AI leader in governance, risk and compliance (GRC) SaaS solutions, helping more than 1 million users and 700,000 board members clarify risk and elevate governance. The Diligent One Platform gives practitioners, the C-Suite and the board a consolidated view of their GRC practice so they can manage risk, build resilience, and make better decisions faster. We are building the future with people who think boldly and move fast, and we value curiosity, experimentation, and continuous learning. We offer a flexible work environment, global days of service, comprehensive health benefits, meeting-free days, generous time off, and wellness programs. Our teams are distributed across the world, with office hubs in New York City, Washington D.C., Vancouver, London, Galway, Budapest, Munich, Bengaluru, Singapore, and Sydney. This role follows a hybrid work model, and if you are within commuting distance of one of our office locations, you will be expected to work onsite at least 50% of the time. We are committed to diversity, inclusion, reasonable accommodations, and a collaborative global culture focused on making a positive impact.

last updated 35 week of 2026