Principal Engineer

CreateFuture is fast becoming the UK’s most recognisable digital consultancy, with years of experience building digital products and services for major organisations whilst putting our people first. We have offices in the centre of Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester and London as well as remote employees located throughout the country. 

We are a team of creators - whether that’s code, project plans, go to market strategies, culture initiatives, marketing campaigns, large language models or people policies. And together, with our clients, we create the future. This has seen us collaborate and partner across a multitude of industries and sectors, with the likes of PayPal, Adidas, NatWest, FanDuel and Money Saving Expert to name just a few.

Our reputation as a partner determined to deliver high-quality, robust and thoughtful products has enabled us to scale to over 500 people in the last couple of years, and it is our amazing people - along with the safe, supportive and friendly culture we have built - that makes CreateFuture a great place to work. Don’t just take our word for it though, we have been recognised by Best Workplaces UK multiple years in a row - across a number of categories - and our employee exit rate is astonishingly low.

Join us on our journey… Let’s create something awesome, together, today.

About the role:

As a Principal Engineer at CreateFuture, you’ll play a key role in leading both client and internal projects to successful outcomes. You'll build strong relationships with stakeholders, provide strategic technical direction, and embed best software engineering practices across our build teams. Your expertise will help shape not just individual projects, but the broader engineering capability within our organisation.

What you’ll be doing:

• Technical Strategy & Leadership: Define and drive technical strategies, setting high standards for architecture, security, and quality across all engineering initiatives.
• Project & Engineering Leadership: Lead engineering across a selection of our client projects from inception through to delivery. You'll help support RFPs and new bids in collaboration with our Commercial team to ensure technical feasibility and excellence.
• Consulting & Business Development: Use your commercial awareness and growth mindset to spot new opportunities and work with commercial teams to expand our impact and revenue.
• Capability Building & Mentorship: Act as a subject matter expert, mentoring engineers and ensuring our technical capabilities evolve in line with client needs and industry trends.
• Pre-Sales & Client Engagement: Shape and lead the technical aspects of pre-sales conversations. Represent CreateFuture through events, public speaking, and written thought leadership.
• Innovation & Industry Impact: Stay ahead of emerging technologies, contribute to our thought leadership, and raise CreateFuture’s profile in the tech community.
• Team Leadership & Culture: Champion an inclusive, collaborative, and psychologically safe team environment. Help foster a strong culture aligned with our values.

We’d love to talk to you if you have:  

• A proven track record as a full-stack engineer with deep technical expertise across both front-end and back-end development — you’re an all-rounder who thrives in a variety of technical environments.
• Strong hands-on experience with React and one of either Java, .NET (or both!)
• Experience designing and building scalable API services, particularly RESTful APIs.
• The ability to lead technical delivery while building trusted relationships with clients, understanding their needs, and translating them into effective solutions.
• A passion for mentoring engineers and sharing knowledge, along with a desire to contribute to the growth of a high-performing, inclusive team.
• Experience in supporting sales conversations and shaping how consultancy engagements are structured and delivered.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (ideally AWS or Azure) as well as modern software development best practices.

 

What we'll offer you:

At CreateFuture, we challenge ourselves to go beyond the obvious and we care deeply about our craft and customers. With us, you’ll have ambitious projects to sink your teeth into and plenty of opportunities to learn and grow. You’ll be part of our safe, supportive and friendly culture - that looks after you - and join our team of genuinely great people. 

Our benefits include:

• Total 35 days holiday (we have flexible bank holidays)
• Comprehensive private medical insurance
• Enhanced parental and adoption leave
• Pension - matched up to 5%

View our complete list of benefits here.

As this is a hybrid role, we’re looking for people within a commuting distance of our hub locations (Edinburgh/Leeds/Manchester/London) and who are flexible when it comes to travelling to client sites and CreateFuture UK regional offices (as/when required). We're very flexible and trust you to manage your own schedule to balance face-to-face time with clients, colleagues and working from home.

We create and reinforce a culture that rewards employees’ impact, not just activity. We trust our employees to work autonomously and promote ownership across all levels.

Next steps:

Our Talent team aims to respond to all applications within a reasonable timeframe, regardless of whether or not we progress your application.

Our interview process:

1. 30-minute call with one of our Talent Acquisition Team.
2. 60-minute Technical Consultancy Interview.
3. 30-minute Take Home Code Review or 60-minute Live Coding exercise plus a 60-minute Values interview.

Our interview process is designed as an opportunity both for our interviewers to learn about your expertise, interests and motivations and for you to gain insights into the role, team and business as a whole, so throughout the process, you’ll meet a few people from our team as well as others from across the business to help you get a well-rounded view of the role and life at CreateFuture.

We believe that representative teams made up of people with different backgrounds, skills, and points of view help us build the best workplace possible, and enable us to create genuinely innovative, broadly useful products.