Principal Software Engineer

automata.tech; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 130,000 - GBP 170,000; Full time

Job summary

A tech company transforming laboratory automation is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead their platform's technical direction. This hands-on role involves mentoring senior teams, defining architecture, and addressing complex engineering challenges. With 12–18 years of experience required, expertise in Golang and system design is crucial. The position offers a hybrid work model in London, along with attractive benefits including health insurance and additional leave.

Benefits

Vitality Health Insurance

Eye Care

Salary Sacrifice - EV

Salary Sacrifice - Bike & Tech

Wellbeing & Support

Wellbeing & Development Allowance

Spill & Employee Assistance Programme

Additional Leave

Pension Scheme

Group Life & Critical Illness cover

Qualifications

• 12–18 years of professional software engineering experience with deep backend focus.
• Strong expertise in Golang and comfortable with Python-based systems.
• Experience influencing and leading senior technical teams.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture and technical direction of core platform.
• Lead, mentor, and influence senior engineers effectively.
• Design scalable, resilient, and secure systems.

Skills

Golang

Python

System design

Distributed systems

Cloud-native environments

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

CI/CD

IaC

Job description

Overview

Level: 6
Salary band: £130,000 - £170,000 depending on experience
Bonus: 15% performance-based, discretionary
Location: Hybrid - 3 days per week on site in London (Angel)

At Automata, we are on a mission to transform how scientists work by making automation accessible to every lab in the world. We design and operate a software platform that orchestrates robots, instruments, data pipelines, and increasingly AI-driven workflows to move labs toward scalable, software-defined automation. Our systems sit at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, orchestration engines, and real-world physical constraints.

We are a product-driven company operating at scale with customers doing meaningful scientific work that saves lives. Our engineering challenges include complex workflows, reliability at scale, performance under constraints, and building platforms that can evolve as new products and capabilities are added. We value strong technical leadership, clear direction, and fast-moving teams that collaborate in person from a modern Central London office designed for focus, energy, and momentum.

What we are looking for

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer who will shape our platform, teams, and technical future. This is a top-end role with significant architectural authority and organisational influence. You will lead and mentor senior technical leaders, own core architectural decisions, and help scale a stable platform into a multi-product foundation — while remaining hands-on and deeply technical.

You have likely built and scaled complex systems, possibly as a CTO or equivalent in a smaller company, and you understand the trade-offs between speed and quality, pragmatism and long-term sustainability. This role reports to the VP of Product and offers a fast growth path for someone with the appetite and capability.

Who you are

• You are outcome-focused — you care deeply about impact, not just elegant solutions.

• You thrive in complexity and ambiguity, bringing structure, clarity, and momentum where it’s missing.

• You are technically opinionated but pragmatic, knowing when to push for the right long-term decision and when to ship and iterate.

• You enjoy working with other senior engineers, raising the bar through example, coaching, and clear technical direction.

• You communicate clearly with engineers, product managers, and non-technical stakeholders, and you are fluent in product language as well as system design.

• You move fast but do not cut corners on reliability or maintainability.

• You are motivated by growth—growing products, growing teams, and growing yourself into bigger leadership challenges.

• You listen and learn as much as you lead, balancing growth opportunities for yourself with helping peers and the business grow.

• You are excited by building scalable, modular, high-quality platforms that enable others to move faster and build better products.

What you will do

Own architecture and technical direction

• Define, evolve, and own the end-to-end technical architecture across our core platform and new products.

• Act as the final technical decision-maker on architecture, core technologies, and engineering approaches.

• Design systems that are scalable, resilient, secure, and adaptable as the business grows.

• Translate product vision and customer needs into clear technical strategy and executable roadmaps.

• Stay hands-on: contribute to critical designs, core platform modules, prototypes, and apply coding skills where it matters most.

Lead and multiply senior engineers

• Lead, mentor, and influence Staff and Senior Staff Engineers (6 direct, ~16 indirect reports).

• Help staff engineers lead their squads effectively, making better technical and organisational decisions.

• Structure teams and responsibilities to improve pace, ownership, and clarity.

• Set technical standards and expectations that raise quality across the organisation.

• Drive a healthy engineering function, balancing pace with engineers’ needs toward a sustainable model.

Scale delivery and improve quality

• Increase engineering pace without sacrificing reliability or maintainability.

• Identify and address scaling pain points, technical debt, and delivery bottlenecks.

• Champion lean, effective engineering processes that support fast, predictable delivery.

• Drive measurable improvements in platform stability, performance, and developer productivity.

Partner with product and customers

• Work closely with Product, Design, Delivery, Sales and Customer Success to ensure alignment between product intent and technical execution.

• Translate product language into architecture and delivery plans.

• Initially partner with Product and Customer Success teams, with the opportunity to engage directly with customers over time for deeper technical collaboration.

Build cloud and edge-connected systems

• Design and evolve event-driven and data-streaming architectures.

• Consider edge deployment constraints and support teams with design trade-offs.

• Balance performance, cost, reliability, and operational simplicity.

• Lead engineering practices in cloud-native environments (Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD, IaC, security).

Enable data and AI-driven capabilities

• Embed AI practices into engineering flows and design.

• Collaborate with data and AI-focused engineers to productionise intelligent systems.

• Bring a pragmatic mindset to AI — focused on real value, reliability, and integration, not hype.

Your background

• 12–18 years of professional software engineering experience, with deep backend and some platform focus.

• Strong expertise in Golang; comfortable reasoning about Python-based systems.

• Experience building products end-to-end, ideally including at least one built from scratch and scaled.

• Strong system design and distributed systems experience.

• Exposure to Kubernetes, containerisation, CI/CD, IaC, security, and modern delivery practices.

• Experience influencing and leading senior technical people.

• Prior CTO (at a startup), Principal Engineer, or equivalent senior technical leadership experience is a strong plus.

Growth & impact

This role is designed for someone who wants real influence today and a fast growth path tomorrow. You’ll be trusted with critical technical decisions, visible impact, and leadership of senior engineers — with a clear opportunity to grow fast as the organisation scales. If you’re excited by hard problems, meaningful products, and building platforms that matter — we’d love to talk.

UK Team Benefits:

• Vitality Health Insurance

• Eye Care

• Salary Sacrifice - EV

• Salary Sacrifice - Bike & Tech

• Wellbeing & Support

• Wellbeing & Development Allowance

• Spill & Employee Assistance Programme

• Additional Leave

• Pension Scheme

• Group Life & Critical Illness cover

We are an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Discrimination of any kind based on race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status is strictly prohibited.