Skip to main content
Principal Engineer - Core Banking Platform
At Skipton Tech, every day is innovation day.
About the role
Job introduction
The Core Banking Platform is the engine that underpins how Skipton records, manages and protects the financial lives of its members. It supports every savings and mortgage account, every transaction posted, every interest calculation and every product change processed across the Society. These are systems that must be accurate, resilient and deeply trustworthy.
As Principal Engineer, you’ll define the engineering standards, patterns and “paved roads” that enable this mission-critical platform to operate with high performance, reliability and integrity. You’ll guide squads working on savings, mortgages and transaction-processing services, helping them deliver small, safe, frequent changes while maintaining the stability and compliance expected from a financial institution.
You’ll shape platform-wide technical direction, enabling our business-focused product teams to deliver member value faster, safer, smarter. While our core systems are primarily built in JADE, we welcome engineers who are comfortable working with long-lived, business-critical technologies, regardless of specific language background.
Your leadership will reduce manual effort, improve operational flow, strengthen accuracy and help colleagues serve members with greater confidence. Above all, you’ll foster an engineering culture rooted in clarity, accountability and continuous improvement.
Who Are We?
We are the UK’s fourth largest building society, proudly mutual and committed to doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues. Being a mutual, we are member owned and this shapes every decision we make.
Our people say Skipton is a great place to work, and it’s officially recognised as the happiest place to live in Great Britain. We’re a place where you can grow, thrive and make a genuine impact, whatever your background or ambitions.
Why This Role Matters
Core Banking sits at the centre of every financial journey our members take. When someone saves with us, takes out a mortgage, makes a payment or reviews their balance, they’re relying on these systems and the engineering behind them.
As expectations grow, we need a modern, dependable engineering foundation that can move quickly without ever compromising accuracy, resilience or regulatory compliance. This is where you come in.
You’ll embed the delivery physics that matter most: low lead time, high deployment frequency, low change-failure rate and rapid recovery. You’ll equip teams with paved roads, Golden Path pipelines, strong observability and secure environments that make fast, safe change the norm.
You’ll also grow skills across squads, align engineering practices and create a trusted environment where teams confidently ship small, frequent, high-quality updates. Your influence will help ensure Core Banking remains the most stable, compliant and strategically important platform in the Society.
What’s In It For You
Skipton is committed to flexibility, balance, and wellbeing. Alongside hybrid working and a newly refurbished, collaborative head office, you’ll enjoy:
- Annual discretionary bonus scheme
- 25 days annual leave + bank holidays, rising to 30 with service
- Holiday trading scheme
- Up to 10% employer pension contribution
- Colleague mortgage (conditions apply)
- Hybrid & electric car salary sacrifice scheme
- Private medical insurance
- 3 paid volunteering days per year
- Inclusive colleague networks (Carers, Pride Alliance, and more)
- Wellbeing benefits including cycle to work and discounted gym membership
- A strong commitment to training and development
What You’ll Be Doing
As Principal Engineer for Core Banking, you’ll set technical direction, establish engineering tenets and design the platform foundations that engineers rely on.
You will
- Define and scale the Golden Path for Core Banking, engineered specifically for our large, critical Core applications embedding secure pipelines, controlled release strategies and resilience-first patterns that allow teams to deliver change safely and confidently as we modernise the platform.
- Architect for reliability and observability, shaping API/event contracts, posting and settlement patterns, product and account boundaries and platform dependency baselines.
- Shift left on quality and security, embedding contract, performance, resilience and security checks into CI, alongside policy-as-code and compliance-as-code controls.
- Lead platform modernisation, including decoupling legacy components, lifting resilience, clarifying domain boundaries and systematically reducing technical debt.
- Improve operational excellence, running recovery drills, refining telemetry and ensuring incidents produce actionable, audit-ready improvements.
- Coach and develop engineers, publish reusable templates and patterns, raise the hiring bar and lead Communities of Practice.
- Work backwards from member and colleague outcomes, using operational insight to simplify, stabilise and enhance servicing and financial workflows.
What We Need From You
- High-performance delivery (VFQ) A proven ability to reduce lead time, increase deployment frequency and maintain low change-failure rates across complex, high-integrity platforms. You use automation, policy-as-code CI/CD, observability and progressive delivery to create safe, predictable flow.
- Outcome-led thinking You start with colleague and member outcomes, using operational telemetry, accuracy signals and servicing insight to guide priorities and shape product engineering decisions.
- Deep craft in Core Banking engineering Hands-on experience with financial domains such as savings, mortgages, posting engines, interest calculations and ledger-integrated workflows. You know how to define clear contracts, boundaries and secure-by-design patterns.
- Influence, clarity and values You develop engineers, shape engineering practice, partner with Architecture, Security, QE, Release, Risk and Audit, and make evidence-led decisions. You role-model Skipton’s values, accountable, curious, collaborative and brave.
What You’ll Bring
- Strong technical influence across large, mission-critical platforms
- The ability to set engineering direction and platform standards
- Experience with long-lived, high-integrity systems (JADE experience helpful but not required)
- Proven capability in CI/CD, observability, resilience engineering and secure-by-design practices
- A track record of improving lead time, deployment frequency, CFR and MTTR
- The ability to simplify complex systems and guide modernisation at scale
- An outcome-focused mindset grounded in operational data and colleague insight
- Collaborative leadership across the full platform ecosystem
- Commercial judgement that ensures investments deliver measurable value
Ready to Make an Impact?
Join us and help shape the next generation of Core Banking at Skipton building the systems that support millions of financial journeys and help colleagues deliver accurate, reliable and human service every day.
Plan your journey
The Bailey, Skipton, United Kingdom, BD23 1AP Google maps
Skipton core benefits
-
Pay
It's only part of the picture
Your salary is only part of your bigger rewards and benefits picture at Skipton. But we’ll make sure you’re rewarded for the role you do, the skills you bring and how you grow with us over time. -
Pensions
Paying the future you
We care about your future and want to help you really make the most of it. That’s why we pay up to an additional 10% into your pension whenever you contribute. -
Bonus
Recognising your part in our success
Many of our colleagues get a discretionary bonus as a thank you for the part they’ve played in our shared success. -
Life Assurance
Protect your loved ones
It’s a subject none of us like to think about, but it’s important to be ready for whatever life throws at us. Financial support for your loved ones in a worst case scenario, gives you extra peace of mind. -
Group Income Protection
Protection from the financial impact of long-term absence
Income Protection gives you a percentage replacement income if you’re off work because of long-term illness or injury. It’ll also protect a level of your income if you’re given medical advice to reduce your work hours following an accident or illness. -
Private Medical Insurance
Fast and effective medical treatment – open to everyone
Is there anything more important than the health of you and your family? Private Medical Insurance (PMI) provides you with quick access to high-quality medical care when it matters.
Why Skipton?
Because your career is more than just a ladder.
Founded on fairness
In 2026, we were named as one of the Financial Times Best Employers in the UK. We were also the highest placed building society on the list, too.
Not bad, right? But it’s much more than just another opportunity to blow our own trumpet. It truly reflects how our people experience working here.
Because at Skipton, we’re a mutual. We’re founded on fairness, built on shared effort, and committed to saying it straight. We’re curious, brave and always collaborative. We look out for each other. And we treat everyone like a grown-up - with respect, with understanding, with a level playing field at their feet.
Our Technology Team
You’ll join a Technology team that’s constantly focused on real challenges. That builds products and solutions which make a genuine difference. And which gets things done for our members - at pace.
And because we’re dead keen on development, it’s a place where you’re encouraged to try out new tech, sharpen your skills, or get hands-on with AI and automation.
Learning & Development
Learning is part of the everyday at Skipton. It’s woven into conversations and brought to life through hands-on experiences. You’ll pick up new skills as you go, and get tools and support that flex around your role and life.
Each month in Technology, we give you two days to focus on your own development. And we support certifications, apprenticeships, and training where it’s relevant, too. It’s a journey for all of us, and we’re working hard to build out a fully structured development programme. The investment is real, the intent is genuine, and most of all, we can’t wait to see where it takes you, your career, and your future.
Meet the recruiter
Nikolay Poyukov
Talent Acquisition Senior Specialist
I joined Skipton in May 2025 to lead recruitment across Tech. I specialise in hiring experts for Infrastructure, Cloud, Data, and Architecture.
At Skipton, the focus is always on people. It’s a collaborative space where you can make a real impact on transformation while being trusted to lead your own professional growth.
What happens when
1. Shortlisting
Once you’ve sent us your application and CV, we’ll review it using clear criteria. Our decisions are based on the skills, and experience you share with us.
2. Your Interview
Your interview might be by phone, over Microsoft Teams or in person, depending on the role and the circumstances. For some roles, there may also be more than one stage in the recruitment process - but we’ll always let you know what the plan is.
During your interview, we’ll ask you about your current and previous experience, and we’re very much interested in all of your skills and knowledge. This includes relevant things you might have learned through work, studies and voluntary activities
For some roles we could ask you to complete one or more tasks, or deliver a presentation. But don't worry, we'll support you throughout the process so you can do your best.
3. After your interview
At Skipton we always get in touch after your interview to let you know if you’re successful, or if you’re made it through to the next stage. And if you would like feedback on your interview we are always happy to share this. It’s all part of the Skipton experience, we value the time you’ve given us throughout the process.
4. Your offer
If you’re successful, we’ll get in touch to discuss your offer. When you accept we’ll send your contract and confirm the pre-employment checks you need to complete to get the ball rolling. You’ll need to successfully complete the checks before starting, so providing information quickly will help keep things on track. We aim to keep things simple and easy to follow.
5. Your Skipton Welcome
You’re in - welcome to the team!
We’ll be in touch regularly right up to your first day with lots of exciting info, details of what to expect when you’re here, and hints and tips to help you prepare for a great start.
And when it comes to the big day, there’ll be a warm welcome waiting for you as you begin your journey with us.