Principal Software Engineer

Salary: £47,000 - 87,000 per year

Requirements:

• We are looking for a technically exceptional engineering leader who still loves being close to the code.
• Proven experience architecting large-scale distributed systems in the cloud.
• Deep expertise in APIs, event-driven architectures, and containerised applications.
• Strong knowledge of AWS and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience leading engineering teams and influencing technical direction across squads.
• A passion for software craftsmanship, clean architecture, and scalable design.
• A mentoring mindset and a collaborative leadership style.
• Curiosity around AI and emerging engineering technologies.
• Experience with Salesforce or enterprise CRM ecosystems is a strong advantage.

Responsibilities:

• Define the architectural vision for our API ecosystem.
• Lead the design and development of scalable, cloud-native distributed systems.
• Build high-throughput event-driven services using Kafka.
• Drive engineering excellence across security, observability, performance, and maintainability.
• Mentor and coach engineers and technical leaders across multiple squads.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Delivery, and Engineering leadership to shape strategic technical decisions.
• Champion modern development practices including TDD, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, and automated testing.
• Explore and embed AI-powered engineering capabilities into our workflows and platform.

Technologies:

• AI
• API
• AWS
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• CRM
• DevOps
• Kafka
• Salesforce
• Security
• TDD
• Lambda
• GraphQL
• Support
• NodeJS
• REST
• React
• TypeScript

More:

At Collinson, we power the experiences behind some of the worlds most recognised travel, financial services, and retail brands. Our flagship product is Priority Pass, the worlds leading airport experiences programme, trusted by travellers across more than 170 countries, and our key clients include Mastercard, American Express, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Flying Blue, Accor, EasyJet, HSBC, Chase, and HDFC. We are a global team of over 2,200 colleagues with a mission focused on doing good beyond profit, and we offer flexible and hybrid working options, work from anywhere for 8 weeks a year, generous parental leave and family-friendly policies, career development, mentorship, training, and a supportive, inclusive culture with employee resource groups and diversity initiatives. We value Take Action, Do the right thing, One team, and Be insight led, and we are hiring a Principal Engineer to help define the next generation of our platform.

last updated 35 week of 2026