Principal Software Engineer

About the role

As a Principal Engineer at 8th Light, you will serve as a go-to technologist and strategist, partnering with clients to solve complex software challenges. You will lead platform strategy, architect scalable solutions, and drive technical vision while mentoring teams and influencing executive stakeholders. This role requires a blend of deep consulting acumen, technical expertise, and product thinking to deliver measurable outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Rapidly build trust with clients by demonstrating technical expertise and understanding of their objectives.
• Drive platform engineering work and lead platform strategy across diverse project types.
• Advise clients on architecture, scalability, and platform evolution to connect technical decisions to business outcomes.
• Design and manage high-level technical roadmaps for large engagements.
• Coach client engineering teams, transfer knowledge, and improve team practices.
• Partner with account teams on planning, opportunity identification, and pre-sales scope shaping.
• Facilitate retrospectives, strategy sessions, and technical deep-dives to improve project outcomes.

Required skills

• Platform engineering
• System architecture
• Consulting
• Software design
• Mentorship
• Stakeholder management
• Scalable systems
• Observability
• Security engineering

Nice to have

• Data Engineering
• Databricks
• Agentic systems
• RAG pipelines
• LangChain
• LlamaIndex
• DevSecOps
• DevOps
• MLOps
• Infrastructure as Code

Benefits

• Wellness package
• Learning and development programme
• O'Reilly learning platform access
• Annual financial stipend for learning
• Coworking support
• New parent leave

About the Company

8th Light is a technology solutions consultancy founded in 2006 that partners with organizations ranging from early-stage startups to large global companies. They specialize in building agentic products and platforms, fostering a collaborative culture grounded in honesty and continuous education.