Principal Engineer

Are you an experienced engineering leader looking to drive innovation and technical excellence in a fast-paced, customer-focused environment? We have an exciting opportunity for a Principal Engineer to join our Proposition & Acquisition value stream, where you will play a key role in shaping the future of our marketing websites, sales quote and buy systems, and key marketing technologies that support both new and existing customers.

About the Role

The Principal Engineer is the Lead Technical Engineer for the Value Stream and resides at the Value Stream leadership level. The role holder is the recognised expert and go-to contact point for all technical and functional aspects of the Value Stream’s domain. They are an all-rounder that can take the lead in new initiatives, live issues, and future technical options. 

The Principal Engineer works closely with the Value stream leadership, and the Solution/Enterprise Architects and head of capabilities in developing the Value stream’s roadmap, therein assessing engineering constraints and quality assurance gates. Such plans must align to the target architecture and engineering strategies. In that regard, the role holder is expected to contribute to and implement the best practices, standards and technical improvements as agreed by the Head of Capabilities and relevant chapter leads in the Value stream.

The Principal Engineer is passionate about adopting new industry best practices in concepts and methodologies. In this respect, they are very visible in both internal and external communities. Working across and with the wider technology organization, they will help remove technology and engineering related impediments, resolve technical constraints and escalations, and be a champion for the technology excellence within BTG.

Accountabilities

• Accountable for detailed design, engineering, and quality of the technical delivery of the Value stream.
• Accountable for ensuring technical designs, solutions and capabilities support the delivery of the business strategy.
• Accountable owner and role model for living the following values: productivity, quality, transparency, and openness over internal politics.
• Accountable for providing open and effective communication channels leading to greater knowledge transfer across the Value stream.
• Accountable for ensuring that each technical solution follows architectural governance processes as set out by the CTO function and supports on ensuring that technology choices and implementations align with technology roadmaps and architecture strategy.
• Accountable for driving continuous improvements, aligned to the engineering strategy to the processes for the Value stream resulting in increased efficiency or enabling greater ROI.
• Accountable for managing the technical debt process and level resulting in ownership over specific epics that address technical debts ensuring that solutions do not result in uncontrolled technical debt.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for providing leadership and mentoring to the engineering community within the Value stream.
• Responsible for leading on the creation of technical solutions for the Value Stream epics/stories, collaborating across the teams to ensure solutions are delivered to an agreed schedule and level of quality.
• Responsible for providing estimates for user stories with a specific view on technical complexities and dependencies, supporting the Head of Delivery with planning.
• Responsible for providing technical leadership and engineering guidance to engineers in the value stream resolving technical constraints and roadblocks faced by the Squads.
• Responsible for owning technical risks/issues and plans mitigation action at the Value stream level.
• Responsible for ensuring that the technical team is working to help achieve the technology strategy of Admiral UK and is an active contributor to the strategic agenda.
• Responsible for owning technical dependencies and provide input to Quarterly (PI) Planning Alignment and Sprint Planning
• Responsible for identifying and implementing continuous improvements to the engineering processes for the Value stream resulting in increased efficiency or enabling greater ROI.
• Responsible for managing specific epics that address technical debts ensuring that solutions do not result in uncontrolled technical debt.
• Responsible for taking ownership in resolving technical impediments for the Value stream.
• Responsible for TDA for the Value Stream to make sure all technical designs new and old pass through with the correct details.

Key interactions

• Coaches’ engineers and technical people in the Value streams
• Collaborates and consults with Architecture, specifically the assigned architecture leads.
• Collaborates and consults with technical governance functions e.g. InfoSec, Data Governance etc.
• Collaborates and consults with Heads of Capabilities for engineering excellence.
• Support Head of Product and Head of IT and Delivery Lead in PI and Value stream level planning
• Dotted line into the Chief Engineer and is part of the extended leadership team.

Knowledge and Experience Required

• Extensive knowledge and experience engineering key technology components.
• Extensive knowledge and experience in design and development with the following:
  • Selected programming languages – Angular, React, Gosu and the Java/J2EE platform.
  • Code repository tools such as GitHub and GitLab.
  • Code deployment tools such as Jenkins, Nexus, or Team City.
  • Performance and monitoring tools e.g. AppDynamics, ELK etc.
  • Automated testing frameworks e.g. Cucumber, Protractor etc.
  • Application Server solutions e.g. JBOSS, Apache Tomcat etc.
  • Cloud applications and services such as Azure, GCP & AWS – this is a key development area for those in this role and needs oversight and responsibility. for keeping abreast of cloud-native development.
  • Spring and Spring boot frameworks.
  • Microservices and containerisation tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Knowledge of Chatbot / Robotics development and capabilities.
• Knowledge and experience of Mobile & App development and capabilities.
• Knowledge and experience with Line management through both coaching and mentoring techniques.
• Experience operating within heavily regulated environments including external regulated consumer products and service offerings.
• Extensive knowledge and experience using development and release toolsets.
• Extensive knowledge of identification and management of specific engineering, design and testing standards and practices that comply with internal organisation IT governance and architectural standards within a heavily regulated environment.
• Knowledge and experience with third party service providers including facilitation of RFP, onboarding, and performance management (design of SLA and overall KPI).
• Previous experience of collaborating with architecture functions to deliver solutions aligned with technology roadmaps and Enterprise Architecture strategies.
• Previous experience of managing and eliminating technical debt.
• Previous experience of Scaled Agile practices and ways of working.
• Extensive experience and awareness of IT architectural governance, standards, and methodology.
• Experience and knowledge of CISO governance frameworks, standards, controls, and auditing documentation covering both business and technology solutions currently within product backlogs.
• Knowledge of insurance technologies preferred e.g. Guidewire core and digital products.
• Knowledge and experience in the use of tools such as: Jira, Confluence etc.

Professional Training Requirements

• Professional Cloud Solutions Architect Certification – example for Cloud based professional qualification.
• TOGAF 9.0 (desirable).
• SAFe® 5 Agilist certification or equivalent (desirable).

Benefits and Work-Life Balance

At Admiral, we are proud to be a diverse business where we put our people and customers first. We have great benefits to ensure employees have a great work-life balance; it's one of the reasons we’re consistently voted one of the Sunday Times Best Big Companies to Work For in the UK. We want you to have an element of freedom to define a working lifestyle that supports this, so accommodate flexible hours wherever possible.

All colleagues will receive 33 days holiday (including banks holidays) when they join us, and this will increase with length of service, up to a maximum of 38 days (including banks holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to five days of annual leave in addition to your allocation.

You can also view some of our other key benefits here.

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