Principal Engineer

We are looking for a Principal Engineer to lead the technical direction of our platform, focusing on system design, platform evolution, and technical quality. As a senior individual contributor, you will act as the technical centre of gravity for Picnic's systems and architecture, ensuring scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency as the platform grows.

Requirements

• Proven hands-on experience delivering and operating backend or distributed systems in a startup or scale-up environment
• Deeply experienced in cloud architecture, particularly within AWS
• Confident designing systems that balance short-term delivery with long-term maintainability
• Comfortable integrating AI tools and agent workflows into engineering practice
• Demonstrate strong judgement around trade-offs, technical debt, and operational risk
• Communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders

Benefits

• Flexible, hybrid working setup
• 33 days holiday (inclusive of Bank Holidays), plus additional Christmas shutdown
• Private Medical Insurance through Vitality
• Picnic pension contribution
• Inclusive parental leave policy