Principal Software Engineer

Hippo is a rapidly growing digital consultancy passionate about building and delivering transformative digital solutions for a diverse range of Public and Private sector clients. We are recruiting for a Principal Software Engineer to join our Hippo Herd. We work at the intersection of strategy, design, and technology to solve complex problems and create lasting value. Our collaborative and agile culture empowers our teams to make a genuine impact.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will play an important role in making Hippo the best Consultancy out there. You will work as part of a multi-disciplinary team combining data, design, product, delivery, analysis and engineering to deliver bespoke digital services that make a positive and meaningful impact on organisations and society. We're confident in our abilities, authentic in our approach, and passionate about what we do.

You will act as a Principal Consultant to deliver Software Engineering services to our clients. Principal Software Engineers at Hippo are strategic leaders who shape the technical direction of projects, drive innovation across the consultancy, and oversee multiple delivery streams within the Hippo engineering community.

Our solutions empower our customers to build and support secure, scalable, and well-engineered systems beyond traditional boundaries. We leverage deep data insights and continuous innovation to deliver awesome platforms that allow our customers to understand and get the most from their data and digital services. The Principal Software Engineer will be a key player and implementer in this mission.

Your Role in a Nutshell

• Provide strategic technical guidance across multiple squads as a high-level SME to ensure user-centred software follows best practice.
• Partner with senior stakeholders to explore, design and deliver innovative solutions to the most complex client problems.

Oversee and optimise the design and management of complex software development and deployment pipelines, removing strategic bottlenecks.

Direct the prioritisation of multi-team workloads, ensuring alignment with high-level operational priorities and complex work-streams.

Act as a high-level communicator and presenter, representing Hippo’s technical vision to executive stakeholders.

Drive strategic relationships with key stakeholders, ensuring that systemic engineering challenges are overcome.

Drive the recruitment strategy for engineering and lead high-level professional development, coaching, and succession planning.

Champion Hippo’s Engineering Herd globally through thought leadership, workshops, and industry conferences.

Essential Experience

• Mastery of multiple modern programming languages and extensive engineering experience across diverse technology stacks (Python, Java, Node, etc.)
• Expert track record of leading multiple delivery teams to deliver enterprise-scale, high-quality, and technology-agnostic solutions.
• Strategic mastery in coaching and guiding senior engineers and leads to achieve optimal results.
• Exceptional verbal/written communication skills, with the ability to influence both technical and executive audiences.
• Expert knowledge of the full development lifecycle for user-centred digital solutions at scale.
• Advanced expertise in architectural strategies and technical roadmaps across diverse and complex environments.
• Expert level experience with containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes) and complex Microservices architectures.
• Strategic design of system integrations and large-scale application architectures.
• Mastery of agile methodologies and their application across large, distributed teams.
• Enterprise-level expertise in Infrastructure as Code and public cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

Strategy-level experience with CI/CD tools and automation at an organisational level.

Desirable Experience

• Significant experience delivering high-profile GOV/NHS or enterprise-scale consultancy projects.
• Proven track record of shaping organisational engineering standards or cultures.

Alongside working with some of the most talented people out there and on-top of a competitive salary, which we’re transparent about from the outset, you can also expect a range of benefits:

• Contributory Pension Scheme (Hippo 6% & Employee 2%)
• 25 Days Holiday plus UK Public Holidays
• Perkbox access for a wide range of discounts
• Critical illness cover
• Life assurance and death in service cover
• Volunteer days
• Cycle-to-work scheme for the avid cyclists
• Salary sacrifice electric vehicles scheme
• Season ticket loans
• Financial and general wellbeing sessions
• Flexible benefits scheme with options of:
• Private health cover
• Private dental cover
• Additional company pension contributions
• Additional holidays (up to an extra 2 days)
• Wellbeing contribution
• Charity contributions
• Tree planting

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Hippo

At Hippo, we’re dedicated to creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace that works for everyone. We understand that having a diverse team unlocks our capacity for innovation, creativity and problem solving. Only by building a community of diverse perspectives, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds can we create an environment where all can contribute and thrive.

We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups including women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent and people with disabilities. We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process that reflects our workplace culture. We are a registered Disability Confident Employer, Mindful Employer, Endometriosis Friendly Employer and a member of the Armed Forces Covenant. Hippo continually strives to remove barriers, provide accommodations and offer reasonable adjustments to ensure equity throughout our practices.

Hi, we’re Hippo 

At Hippo, we design with empathy and build for impact. We do this by combining data-informed evidence, human-centred design and software engineering.  We're a digital services partner who is genuinely invested in helping our clients thrive as modern organisations. Our delivery methodology is truly agile, from concept to reality, supporting innovation and continuous improvement to achieve your desired outcomes.

We firmly believe that technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. We take a human-centred approach to everything we do because we understand that complex problems require a service design approach. This means understanding how users behave and ensuring our solutions work for them in the real world. 

Our combination of data, design, and engineering delivers bespoke digital services that make a positive and meaningful impact on organisations and society. 

Have a look through our Website at Our Story & Purpose, Our Culture & Values, Case Studies and Our Solutions & Services to find out some more!

Hippo Locations

We are headquartered in Leeds and have offices across the UK in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London and Bristol. We're on the lookout for top talent nationwide but you need to be located within reasonable travelling distance from one of our offices. Given the dynamic nature of a consulting business, you may be required to work on-site at a Hippo office or at an in/out of town client location for a number of days per week (client dependent) and therefore candidates will need to be open/flexible to travel and working on one of those sites at least 2 days per week. We offer a generous relocation support package of up to £8,000 (please ask for terms and conditions) to help make your move a smooth one.