Principal Engineer
London / Manchester
All Technology – Technology /
Permanent /
Hybrid
Our Ways of Working Principles:
We believe that most of us do our best work when we work together, but we know that everyone works in different ways, and quite frankly, has other commitments and responsibilities outside of work.
As we further adjust to hybrid working, we want to take what we've learnt from working remotely and keep the flexibility that's enabled us to thrive and keep driving our business forward.
We have some core principles which support us in this:
Do what’s right
Trust & give permission
Delivery matters
We understand ways of working can look different based on your role, team and you as an individual so we are here to support and discuss this with you during the interview process.
Work with us
At Moonpig Group our mission is to help people connect and create moments that matter. We’re an international group made up of three brilliant brands – Moonpig in the UK, Ireland, US and Australia, and Greetz in the Netherlands – with our newest addition Buyagift joining us in 2022.
We were founded with a goal to disrupt the traditional greetings industry. Two decades on, we’re an established leader within the online gifting market, offering a wide range of products to customers across the world.
Moonpig is an iconic brand and innovator, with clear values (read more about our values here!). These values set our teams and our business up for success in an environment that’s fun, supportive and challenging. They’re the glue that binds us together and we think of them as a platform to help us deliver our best work. You have every chance to drive impact here at Moonpig, and most importantly, we genuinely want you!
Our architecture is built for scale and flexibility which will allow us to quickly innovate and launch new propositions - coupling that with the wealth of data we have on our customers, the sky's the limit in the world of experimenting with cutting edge ideas.
What you’ll be doing:
A Principal Engineer is the highest level a single contributor can achieve at Moonpig. They drive the same level of impact and influence as a Director and because of this, it’s a very highly regarded role. At this level you are able to set company wide technical principles and processes whilst supporting their adoption through proper engagement and collaboration. You are able to mentor and coach Senior Engineers and actively work to advocate the Moonpig brand externally. It’s an exciting role with plenty of opportunities to do great things.
As a Principal Engineer, we have the following three big expectations:
- Defining technical principles and practices. As a Principal, simply writing good code and advocating the practice of good coding is not enough. You are responsible for defining the patterns and practices that help us build a world class engineering team, able to deliver quickly at the highest standards. This will require you to work with other principals and engineers at all levels in making your ideas a reality. In essence you’ve done this before. How do we avoid the mistakes and do it better.
- Architecture is a competency, not a function. At Moonpig, we do not have architecture as a separate function. Instead, we believe that architecture is a skill that everyone should grow, and Principals are the pinnacle representation of that skill. We expect you to take a systems thinking approach to problem solving and provide architectural input where needed. There is no ivory tower thinking here either. You need to collectively drive decisions and work with engineers in delivering features and solutions. You will be writing code, and plenty of it.
- Culture and advocacy. Engineering is so much more than just coding. As a Principal Engineer you are the pinnacle of engineering at Moonpig and as such, you represent what we are capable of. Because of this, there is a high expectation around Principal Engineers to be great advocates of Moonpig either internally or externally. If internal, you should be comfortable speaking to groups, having high level technical conversations and supporting a strong growth culture through advocating, training and core beliefs. If external, you should be comfortable representing Moonpig at external meetups, events and conferences. Blogging should be natural and what we put forward to the technical community should be insightful, forward thinking and demonstrate our technical capabilities.
Overall, as a Principal Engineer, your value comes from more than just writing code. It’s around impact, influence and your ability to drive change.
You’ll be a good fit for the role if you:
- Experienced in Node.js, but you’re happy to work across multiple languages and ecosystems. We use TypeScript so knowledge/experience in this would be a bonus.
- Have experience with CI/CD and own your code from build through deployment to production support and monitoring.
- Familiar with scalable, serverless system design and the positives and trade-offs that come with it
- Passionate about building robust and performant cloud/serverless applications, with a focus on user experience and business growth.
- Enjoy being part of a full-stack, cross-functional team, working closely with people of different specialisms within your team and across the business.
- Have an awareness of web application and cloud security and will collaborate effectively with our internal security team.
- Keen to work with and help guide the technical roadmap of multiple teams, while also influencing across the engineering organisation as a whole, setting best practices
- Able to lead through influence rather than mandate
- You’re willing to challenge your own ideas; to try, fail, learn and repeat.
- You encourage others to do the same.
Our Tech Environment
- AWS, Serverless, Terraform, Node.js, TypeScript, C#, .NET Core, GraphQL, React.
- GitHub for SCM, CI/CD through GitLab pipelines.
- Robust and performant cloud/serverless applications, with a focus on user experience and business growth.
- Full-stack, cross-functional teams owning the whole software development lifecycle from discovery to delivery.
- We don’t expect you to have experience with all of the technologies above. Some of our product teams use .Net Core and others use Node.js/Typescript, so if you have experience in either, along with cloud/serverless experience, please apply!
How we get there:
- Kanban
- Jira / Confluence
- Grafana and AWS Cloudwatch
- Google Analytics
- Clean Architecture
- TDD
- Pair Programming
- Focus on experimentation to validate our hypothesis
Want to hear more?
Moonpig’s Commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity
At Moonpig Group, we’re committed to creating an inclusive and caring culture with brilliant people who feel a real sense of belonging. We welcome and celebrate all diverse backgrounds to Moonpig Group, from working parents who need flexibility with their hours to individuals who are neurodiverse and prefer to work a certain way.
We’re proud to have several employee-led committees within our organisation, including the LGBTQ+, Gender Balance, Neurodiversity and our EMBRACE (Educating Myself for Better Racial Awareness and Cultural Enrichment) Committees.
We’ll continue to push for diversity and that sense of belonging so that all Moonpig Group employees feel safe and comfortable to be their true authentic self at work.
