Database Principal Engineer

Role Title: Database Principal Engineer

Duration: contract to run until 30/11/2026

Location: Sheffield/Birmingham, Hybrid 3 days per week onsite

Rate: up to £726.80 p/d Umbrella inside IR35

Role purpose / summary

If you are looking for a career that will help you stand out, join our client, and fulfil your potential. Whether you want a career that could take you to the top, or simply take you in an exciting new direction, our client offers opportunities, support and rewards that will take you further. Our client is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world, with operations in 64 countries and territories. We aim to be where the growth is, enabling businesses to thrive and economies to prosper, and helping people to fulfil their hopes and realise their ambitions.

Database Platform are a global function within our client’s Chief Technology Office (CTO), with approximately 170 staff in multiple locations around the globe. We are responsible for defining the strategy and roadmap for database products used by our client applications. This entails definition of standard products, automation around its consumption and operation, governance over their use, while creating capability to manage the Client’s database estate at scale, applying engineering solutions and ensuring their availability, recoverability, and security.

We are currently seeking an experienced Principal Engineer whose main area of expertise is Database but is complemented with strong engineering skills. As a Principal Engineer you will be at the forefront of our technology, influencing the strategy and direction of our services. This is a leadership role where you will be responsible for driving technical excellence across a diverse set of tooling, mentoring, and developing a team of talented engineers, and ensuring that our services are designed and built with availability, resiliency, safety, and security, in mind. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to define, design, and deliver, our next generation of products and services that meet business needs.

Key Skills/ requirements

• Develop and maintain the long-term strategy for database infrastructure, ensuring alignment with the bank’s overall IT and business strategies.
• Function as a subject matter expert and advisor on all matters related to database technologies, providing guidance to senior leadership and IT teams.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Architects, and stakeholders to define technical requirements and technical specifications.
• Co-Lead the design and architecture of the bank’s shared database solutions (DBaaS/PaaS), followed by their implementation.
• Stay informed about industry trends, emerging technologies and advancements in engineering practices, evaluating and recommending innovative solutions as appropriate.
• Support the Platform Lead and identify solutions to engineering gaps/challenges.
• Facilitate development of cross-functional capabilities to address common gaps/challenges.
• Act as key point of contact for engineering decisions from a technical and risk perspective.
• Look to innovate/improve processes, reducing hand-offs and automate processes.

Experience, Technical Skills and Qualifications Required:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a relevant discipline.
• 10+ years’ experience in engineering roles, with a minimum of 5 in a senior or principal engineering position.
• Technical proficiency in Database technologies, relational, noSQL, distributed SQL, deployed on IaaS or part of DBaaS.
• Strong understanding of consumer use case and how databases infrastructure capabilities work.
• Expertise in infrastructure components, performance tuning, and capacity planning.
• Understanding of, and hands on experience of, micro services, software development, infrastructure automation, api development and basic application system’s design.
• Strong understanding experience on Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps Capabilities (CI/CD/CT Pipelines, Automated Testing, Code Scanning etc.) and Infrastructure as Code.
• Industry strength knowledges of testing practices and tooling.
• Proven track record of leading large, enterprise level projects and delivering quality solutions.
• Strong technical leadership skills, teambuilder and influencer
• Exposure and success working within a global matrix organization model.
• Familiarity with regulatory requirements and best practices in the financial industry.
• Ability to liaise with other engineers, architects, and business stakeholders to understand and drive the platform, product or service’s direction.
• Gravitas and ability to interact with and advise senior executives.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to translate and convey complex technical information to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience of evaluating multiple technology solutions in order to define and design best fit for a particular use case.

Additional Role Requirements:

• Deep Technical Expertise: Well-versed in engineering principles and the broader technical landscape, with strong architectural knowledge.
• Leadership & Influence: Demonstrates gravitas and the ability to lead complex initiatives, inspire confidence, and motivate cross-functional teams.
• Strategic Collaboration: Works closely with internal stakeholders and business partners to align architecture decisions with organizational goals.
• Vision & Communication: Capable of articulating technical strategies clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, fostering alignment and buy-in.

All profiles will be reviewed against the required skills and experience. Due to the high number of applications we will only be able to respond to successful applicants in the first instance. We thank you for your interest and the time taken to apply!