Overview
We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead a small team on a public-sector R&D programme focused on the cybersecurity and operational assurance of AI agents. This role involves taking technical ownership of an existing software capability, extending it into new environments, and ensuring robust engineering standards while working closely with experienced engineers in a primarily remote setting. The ideal candidate will drive architecture and design decisions, oversee implementation challenges, and maintain a clear focus on security and performance as the programme evolves.
Responsibilities
- Take technical ownership of the existing software capability and its evolution.
- Establish and maintain the programme’s technical architecture, design principles and engineering standards.
- Define clear system and trust boundaries across agent platforms, enterprise services and security controls.
- Lead the architecture for independently observable evidence surrounding automated actions.
- Review code and designs, investigate difficult technical problems, and provide hands-on engineering support.
- Maintain architectural coherence across parallel research and development workstreams.
- Support security reviews, adversarial evaluations, and technical release readiness.
Requirements
- Deep hands-on software engineering experience with architecture responsibility.
- Strong practical ability in Rust or another relevant systems or backend language.
- Experience designing and building complex backend, distributed or security-sensitive systems.
- Proven ability to understand and modify unfamiliar production codebases.
- Sound engineering judgement related to observability and security assumptions.
- Experience leading senior engineers while remaining technically hands-on.
- Strong testing, code review and debugging discipline.
- Familiarity with cryptographic integrity mechanisms and AI-agent frameworks is preferred.