Our client is a global jewellery manufacturer transforming its engineering capabilities for one of its core teams. We are looking for a Principal Engineer who will act as a team coach, enabling best engineering practices and raising the capability of the people around them.

Your primary mission is to elevate the team's engineering maturity - embedding lasting practices in DevOps, software architecture, and modern ways of working. You will work embedded within the team: mentoring engineers day-to-day, leading a migration from Azure DevOps to GitHub, and maturing the engineering discipline and architectural thinking.

Coaching & Mentoring

• Serve as the primary engineering coach for the team - working alongside engineers through pair programming, code review, and structured knowledge sessions

• Identify capability gaps at both individual and team level, and design targeted approaches to close them

• Champion engineering best practices: branching strategies, peer review processes, documentation, and testing disciplines

• Run internal tech talks and demos to accelerate knowledge transfer across the team

DevOps

• Lead the migration from Azure DevOps to GitHub - including repository restructuring, pipeline decomposition, and CI/CD implementation using GitHub Actions

• Define and embed a branching strategy and release governance model appropriate for the team's context

• Drive adoption of Infrastructure as Code practices using Terraform

• Establish automated testing and deployment pipelines as the team's standard way of working

Engineering Practices & Architecture

• Coach the team on software architecture principles, design patterns, and how to make sound architectural decisions

• Introduce and guide adoption of unit testing and broader test automation strategies

• Support the team in adopting AI-powered development tooling and integrating it responsibly into their workflow

Stakeholder Collaboration

• Work closely with the Delivery Manager to align enablement priorities with delivery commitments and team capacity

• Communicate technical concepts and engineering maturity progress clearly to non-technical stakeholders

• Participate in agile ceremonies and contribute to continuous improvement of team processes

• Extensive software engineering experience, with a career arc that has moved towards coaching, mentoring, and team-level impact

• Deep expertise in DevOps practices, culture, and tooling

• Hands-on experience with GitHub and GitHub Actions - you can lead the Azure DevOps to GitHub migration with confidence

• Strong grounding in software architecture and engineering design principles

• Proven ability to uplift engineering capability in a team through coaching, standards-setting, and leading by example

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code, particularly Terraform

• Strong experience with CI/CD pipeline design, branching strategies, and release governance

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills - you are as comfortable with people as you are with technology

• A genuine passion for developing others - this is the heart of the role

Nice-to-have skills:

• Experience with AI-powered development tooling

• Familiarity with Azure Synapse Analytics and/or Databricks

• Exposure to Power BI or similar BI and reporting tools

• Experience with SharePoint development or modern web stack migrations

• Background in full-stack web development