SL
Principal of backend
Contract type
Ongoing
Work mode
Remote · United Kingdom
Experience
Lead / principal · Not stated
Level inferred from job title
Job description
Principal Backend Engineer at an insurance software company, acting as the CTO's primary technical partner for backend engineering and improving the engineering organisation's technical decision-making. The role is primarily about influence, architecture and mentoring rather than feature delivery.
At a glance
- Employment
- Full-time · Employee (employment agreement)
- Work mode
- Remote · United Kingdom
What you'll do
- Shape our backend engineering strategy, architecture and technical direction.
- Help engineers make better technical and architectural decisions.
- Develop sensible engineering principles and guardrails without replacing good judgement with rules.
- Guide the continued evolution of our monolith and modern service-based platform.
- Coach and mentor engineers, developing their technical skills and judgement.
- Review significant designs and architectural decisions and challenge unnecessary complexity.
- Champion security, quality, testing, observability, resilience and performance.
- Identify technical risks and help teams navigate them.
- Evaluate technologies and patterns based on their value to SchemeServe rather than their popularity elsewhere.
- Balance long-term engineering quality with short-term business needs.
- Occasionally contribute directly to implementation when that's genuinely the best way to help.
What we're looking for
- Deep expertise in modern backend engineering and strong commercial C#/.NET experience.
- Strong knowledge of software architecture, distributed systems and API design.
- Experience with mature legacy applications and modern service-oriented architectures.
- Strong cloud architecture experience, ideally Azure.
- Excellent understanding of databases, security, testing, maintainability and modern software delivery.
- Experience shaping engineering principles and practices across teams.
- A track record of making engineers around you better through mentoring, coaching and technical leadership.
- The ability to challenge experienced engineers constructively without becoming a gatekeeper.
- Strong opinions, loosely held – the confidence to challenge and the humility to change your mind.
- Excellent communication and the ability to influence without relying on authority.
- Excellent technical judgement, balancing quality, complexity, risk, cost and business value.
Nice to have
- Experience modernising large monolithic applications.
- Commercial TypeScript backend experience.
- Cloudflare or edge technology experience.
- SaaS platforms at scale.
- Financial services, insurance or another regulated industry.
- Observability, platform engineering or SRE experience.
- AI-assisted development and engineering productivity tooling.
Benefits
- Fully remote UK-based role.
- Twice-yearly company retreats.
- Flexible working.
- Dedicated professional development support.
- Paid charity days.
- Free books, mentoring and professional development.
- Free biscuits through the post.
Apply
About SchemeServe Limited
Insurance software like no other.
SchemeServe is insurance software like no other. Hosted in the cloud for MGAs, brokers and insurers, the SchemeServe platform boasts unique flexibility, unstoppable innovation and truly Obsessive Support. Started in 2000 by our CEO, Adam, SchemeServe has grown from strength to strength, never having taken outside investment.
Key facts
- 2000
- Insurance software
- Fully remote company
- Grown without outside investment
- Gets together twice a year for Team Retreats
- Platform has been evolving for more than 25 years
What they value
- Self-development and continuous learning
- Flexible working
- Relaxed and open company culture