Job Description

Purpose of the role

Overall Purpose of Role

The Principal Engineer – Solution Design & Architecture is responsible for providing senior technical leadership across Wealth Management engineering teams, ensuring solutions are well designed, scalable, secure and aligned with enterprise architecture principles.

Operating across multiple products, platforms and initiatives, the role acts as the bridge between Engineering and Architecture, helping teams translate business requirements and architectural direction into practical, deliverable solutions.

The role provides hands-on technical leadership throughout the solution lifecycle, supporting engineering teams with solution design, technical decision making, design assurance and complex problem solving. Working closely with Architects, Engineering Directors, Product and Delivery teams, the Principal Engineer promotes engineering consistency, design quality and technical excellence across the Wealth Management technology estate.

Key Accountabilities

Solution Design & Technical Leadership

• Lead the design of complex technology solutions across Wealth Management platforms, ensuring alignment with business objectives, engineering standards and architectural principles.
• Partner with engineering teams during discovery, design and delivery phases to develop scalable, secure and maintainable solutions.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance on solution design decisions, helping teams navigate complexity, trade-offs and implementation challenges.
• Review and challenge solution designs to ensure appropriate consideration of scalability, resilience, security, performance, operability and maintainability.
• Support engineering teams in translating architectural patterns and strategic technology direction into practical implementation approaches.

Architecture Alignment & Governance

• Act as the primary interface between Engineering and Architecture, ensuring effective collaboration and alignment across initiatives.
• Work closely with Architects to communicate architectural direction, standards and technology strategies across Wealth Management engineering teams.
• Contribute to architecture reviews, design governance and technology decision forums.
• Identify architectural risks, design gaps and technical dependencies early, helping teams address issues before they impact delivery.
• Promote the adoption of enterprise standards, reference architectures, reusable patterns and shared platform capabilities.

Cross-Team Engineering Enablement

• Support multiple engineering teams with design guidance, technical assurance and solution optimisation.
• Drive consistency of engineering approaches, technology selection and solution patterns across Wealth Management.
• Facilitate technical collaboration across teams to encourage reuse, reduce duplication and improve overall technology coherence.
• Provide leadership on the most complex technical challenges, production issues and cross-domain initiatives.

Engineering Excellence

• Champion engineering best practices across design, development, testing, deployment and operational support.
• Drive improvements in solution quality, technical debt management, observability, resilience and operational readiness.
• Promote modern engineering approaches including API-led design, cloud-native architectures, automation and platform engineering.
• Ensure solutions are designed with appropriate consideration for security, regulatory compliance and operational resilience requirements.

Technical Capability Development

• Mentor Engineering Leads, Senior Engineers and Software Engineers in solution design and architectural thinking.
• Foster stronger engineering understanding of architecture principles, design patterns and technology strategy.
• Support the development of technical communities and design forums across Wealth Management.

Essential Skills / Experience

• Significant experience as a Principal Engineer, Lead Engineer, Solution Architect or equivalent senior technical leadership role.
• Strong background in solution design and software engineering across complex enterprise platforms.
• Demonstrable experience designing scalable, secure and resilient distributed systems.
• Deep understanding of modern engineering practices, including APIs, microservices, event-driven architectures, cloud platforms and DevSecOps.
• Ability to balance architectural principles with practical delivery considerations and engineering constraints.
• Experience working closely with Architecture functions, contributing to design governance and technology strategy.
• Strong understanding of non-functional requirements including security, resilience, performance, observability and operational support.
• Proven ability to influence technical decisions across multiple teams without direct management authority.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, capable of engaging effectively with Engineers, Architects, Product and business stakeholders.

Experience operating within regulated financial services environments and understanding associated risk, security and compliance requirements.