Principal Engineer

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 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 ADO.
• Code deployment tools such as ADO, Nexus, or Team City.
• Performance and monitoring tools e.g. AppDynamics, DataDog 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

Expectation is that they would require specific domain, technology type qualifications dependent upon expected backlog technical outcomes (subject matter qualifications)

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

Admiral: Where You Can

We take pride in being a diverse and inclusive business. It's a place where you can Be You, and show up as you are. We’re committed to fostering a people-first culture where everyone is accepted, supported, and empowered to be brilliant. You can, Grow And Progress at a pace and direction that suits you, Make A Difference for our customers and each other, and Share in Our Future with all colleagues eligible for up to £3,600 of free shares each year after one year of service.

Everyone receives 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) when they join us, increasing the longer you stay with us, up to a maximum of 38 days (including bank holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to an additional five days of annual leave.

We’re proud of our people-first culture. In fact, we've been recognised as a Great Place to Work for Women, a Great Place to Work for Wellbeing, and an overall Great Place to Work for over 25 years! We’re fully committed to making sure your progression is not slowed or halted by barriers related to race, gender, age, sexuality or any of the protected characteristics.

Our fantastic benefits make sure our colleagues have a great work-life balance; You can view some of our other key benefits here.

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