Principal Software Engineer

Job Title: Principal Software Engineer – Node / TypeScript

Location: 100% Remote – UK / Europe (open to Portugal and similar locations)

Salary: £130,000 – £150,000

Industry: CyberSecurity SaaS, Vulnerability Scanning

Company profile: Bootstrapped start-up, high trust / high leverage product focussed engineering team

Company size: 6 people

The Company

This isn’t your typical SaaS platform.

The business is building a security-focused cloud product that helps organisations continuously understand and reduce risk across their digital estate.

The product is used by teams ranging from fast-growing technology companies to larger, more established organisations, operating in environments where reliability, correctness, and trust really matter.

The company is fully remote, deeply engineering-led, and values clean architecture, thoughtful system design, and long-term technical quality over short-term fixes. They’re now looking for an exceptional Principal Software Engineer to play a key role in shaping the platform as it continues to evolve.

The Role

This is a hands-on principal-level role for a truly T-shaped engineer — someone with exceptional depth in Node.js and TypeScript, who is equally happy getting involved across adjacent technologies, tooling, and system design when required.

You’ll sit at the heart of the engineering team, owning some of the most complex and business-critical parts of the platform, and helping to set technical direction through both influence and example.

You will:

• Design, build, and evolve backend services using Node.js and TypeScript, supporting APIs, orchestration, and asynchronous processing.
• Take ownership of system-level architecture, driving decisions around scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Lead the design and implementation of clean, well-structured APIs with a strong focus on developer experience.
• Set and uphold high standards for code quality, testing, observability, and operational readiness.
• Identify and address performance bottlenecks, reliability risks, and technical debt across core services.
• Contribute meaningfully to long-term technical strategy while remaining consistently hands-on.

You Should Have

• Deep, practical experience building production backend systems with Node.js and TypeScript.
• A strong track record working on distributed systems with real operational complexity.
• Excellent understanding of asynchronous workflows, background processing, and event-driven architectures.
• Experience designing and maintaining APIs used by multiple consumers.
• Solid grounding in data persistence, caching, and system reliability concerns.
• Comfort working in cloud-hosted production environments and contributing to CI/CD and operational tooling.
• A strong appreciation for security, correctness, and defensive engineering practices.
• Clear, confident communication skills and the ability to influence technical direction across a team.
• Experience operating at senior or principal level while remaining highly hands-on.

Nice to Have:

• Exposure to security-focused platforms, developer tools, or data-heavy SaaS products.
• Experience working on systems with long-running jobs or high-volume background processing.

Tech Stack (High-Level)

• Backend services written primarily in Node.js and TypeScript
• API-driven architecture supporting internal and external consumers
• Background processing and asynchronous workflows
• Cloud-hosted production environments
• Automated testing, monitoring, and CI/CD pipelines

Why Join?

• Work on a mission-critical platform where engineering quality directly impacts customers.
• Solve meaningful problems in distributed systems, backend architecture, and platform reliability.
• Join a senior, low-ego engineering team that values clarity of thought and clean execution.
• Fully remote, high-trust environment with real autonomy and ownership.
• Competitive salary and the opportunity to have genuine influence over the technical direction of the product.