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Principal Engineer - Member Experience Platform
At Skipton Tech, every day is innovation day.
About the role
Job introduction
Principal Engineer – Member Experience Platform (App, Portal & Identity)
The Member Experience Platform (MEP) powers Skipton’s most visible digital channels, our Mobile App, Member Portal, and Customer Identity capabilities, used by over a million members to manage their financial lives. As Principal Engineer, you set the engineering tenets, patterns and paved roads that these channels (and the teams who build them) depend on every day. Your remit spans company‑level technical direction, delivery physics (Value-Flow-Quality), and bar‑raising across squads: you shorten lead times, increase deployment frequency, hold change‑failure rate low, and improve MTTR through release‑linked observability - turning fast, safe flow into the default way of working.
Operating at platform scale, you define cross‑cutting architecture and delivery standards (API/event contracts, resilience, observability, language/dependency baselines) and drive adoption through the Golden Path: policy‑as‑code CI/CD, progressive delivery (feature flags, canary/blue‑green), automated rollback/forward‑fix, ephemeral, data‑ready environments, and guardrails that make security and compliance by design. You partner with Platform Ownership, DevSecOps, Environments, Release, and Quality Engineering to turn strategy into small, safe, frequent changes, so MEP ships world‑class, member‑centric experiences that feel simple, personal and human, every week. You’ll also lead and manage a cohort of engineers within MEP — setting goals, raising the hiring bar, growing craft through coaching and feedback, and building a healthy, high‑performance culture in partnership with the Platform Owner
Who Are We?
Not just another building society. Not just another job.
We’re the fourth largest building society in the UK, and proudly mutual, owned by our members, not shareholders. That means every decision we make is about doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues.
Our people say Skipton is a great place to work, and now it’s officially recognised as the happiest place to live in Great Britain. Whatever your background or ambitions, we’ll help you grow, thrive, and shape a better future.
Why This Role Matters
The Member Experience Platform is where Skipton’s purpose becomes real for members, through the Mobile App, Member Portal and Identity journeys that people rely on to save, apply, manage and stay secure. As these journeys grow in sophistication and impact, the engineering system behind them must operate at a high‑performance, high‑reliability standard. This is where the Principal Engineer becomes pivotal. You ensure that the platform’s architectural patterns, delivery practices and technical decisions make it possible to ship small, safe, frequent improvements that continually raise the quality, speed and reliability of member‑facing experiences.
This role matters because Skipton’s ability to deliver happier, healthier, stronger member outcomes depends on engineering physics, low lead times, high deployment frequency, low change‑failure rate and fast recovery. The Principal Engineer owns these physics: designing the tenets, guardrails and paved roads that engineers across MEP depend on to move quickly and safely. You make the right path the easy path, through Golden Path pipelines, policy‑as‑code, release-linked observability, on‑demand environments and shift‑left quality, so teams can focus on what matters most: inventing on behalf of members and delivering digital experiences that feel simple, personal and human.
Crucially, you’ll achieve these delivery physics through people, developing Engineers, aligning squads on the same tenets, and creating a culture where psychological safety and high standards co‑exist. Your leadership turns fast, safe flow into a repeatable team habit, not a one‑off effort.
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 the Member Experience Platform, you will set the technical direction, engineering tenets and paved roads that shape how our Mobile App, Member Portal and Identity services are built, deployed and operated. You will operate with company‑wide influence — defining the patterns, guardrails and architectural boundaries that enable teams to deliver small, safe, frequent changes with low lead times, high deployment frequency, low CFR and fast recovery baked in. You establish the platform’s engineering “north star” and ensure every squad can confidently move toward it.
You will design and evolve the Golden Path for MEP: our secure‑by‑default, policy‑as‑code CI/CD pipelines; progressive delivery frameworks (feature flags, canary, blue/green, automated rollback/forward‑fix); and on‑demand, ephemeral, data‑ready environments. You’ll define service blueprints, IaC modules, API/event patterns, dependency baselines and observability standards — ensuring they become the default way MEP ships value. Your work makes high‑performance delivery repeatable, not heroic.
A critical focus of your role is Value–Flow–Quality (VFQ). You will help squads diagnose and remove constraints, redesign delivery flows, adopt trunk‑based development, tighten test automation, embed contract/performance/resilience/security testing inside CI, and build release‑linked observability that ties every deployment to metrics, logs, traces and golden signals. You will publish and act on flow signals (lead time, deployment frequency, CFR, MTTR) and help teams do the same — raising engineering maturity across the platform.
You will also own the engineering strategy that enables the platform to evolve — driving a 1–3-year modernisation roadmap covering decoupling, core refactoring, data strategy improvements, resilience uplift and technical debt retirement. You will collaborate with Architecture, DevSecOps, Environments, Release & Deployment and Quality Engineering to ensure platform‑wide consistency in design, operability, risk controls, compliance-as-code and secure-by-design foundations.
Finally, you will act as a multiplier of engineering excellence across Skipton — coaching Staff/Senior Engineers, leading Communities of Practice, shaping the hiring bar, authoring design/decision narratives, and representing Skipton in internal and external engineering forums. You raise the bar for clarity, craft, system thinking and decision quality, ensuring the Member Experience Platform delivers digital experiences that feel simple, secure and human for every member.
What do we need from you?
1. Proven leadership in high‑performance delivery (VFQ excellence)
You have led engineering environments where lead time drops, deployment frequency rises, and change‑failure rate stays low, using automation‑first pipelines, trunk‑based development, progressive delivery, release‑linked observability and data‑ready environments to make fast, safe flow the norm – with daily/weekly delivery of value the norm.
2. Deep craft in modern, cloud‑native engineering
You bring expertise in secure‑by‑design, cloud‑native architecture, distributed systems, API/event patterns, resilience engineering, IaC, policy‑as‑code CI/CD, observability, progressive delivery, testability and automated rollback/forward‑fix. Your technical grounding allows you to set the tenets other engineers depend on.
3. Ability to build the right thing >> working backwards from members
You use journey data, telemetry and member insight to invent on their behalf, ensuring App, Portal and Identity experiences are simple, secure, human and continuously improving. You anchor engineering decisions in measurable outcomes, not assumptions.
4. A true technical multiplier with organisation‑wide influence
You raise the bar across squads and platforms, defining reusable templates, service blueprints and engineering patterns; mentoring, managing and leading Engineers; leading Communities of Practice; shaping the hiring bar; and improving decision quality through clear narratives and technical judgement.
5. A values‑led, evidence‑driven mindset
You role‑model Be Accountable, Be Curious, Be Collaborative, Be Brave, making decisions using scorecard signals, SLOs, error budgets and delivery metrics. You create psychological safety, celebrate safe/fast releases, advocate for continuous improvement, and operate with clarity, judgement and ownership expected of a Principal at top engineering organisations.
What You’ll Bring
You bring company‑wide technical influence, clear judgement, and a track record of setting the tenets, patterns and paved roads that hundreds of engineers can rely on — turning fast, safe flow into the default way of working across App, Portal and Identity.
- Deep modern engineering craft: expert in secure‑by‑design, cloud‑native architecture, APIs/events, resilience engineering, IaC and policy‑as‑code CI/CD; comfortable defining language/dependency baselines and architectural boundaries other teams adopt with confidence.
- People leadership: a track record of managing engineers, building growth plans, giving clear feedback, and running fair, evidence‑based performance processes.
- Hiring & succession: you set the hiring bar, calibrate levels, and build succession by developing Staff/Senior engineers into future leaders
- Delivery physics mastery (VFQ): proven ability to shorten lead time, increase deployment frequency, hold CFR low and improve MTTR, using trunk‑based development, progressive delivery (feature flags, canary, blue/green), automated rollback/forward‑fix and release‑linked observability.
- Observability & reliability, built‑in: you instrument for golden signals, traces and deployment annotations; define SLOs/error budgets; lead recovery drills and failure‑mode testing so reliability improves as speed increases.
- On‑demand environments & data: you standardise ephemeral, production‑like environments with data‑on‑demand (masked/synthetic/seeded), parity checks and drift detection, so teams can release small, safe changes with confidence.
- Modernisation & decoupling at platform scale: you shape 1–3 year engineering roadmaps that simplify and decouple systems, retire technical debt, uplift resilience and improve developer experience across MEP’s App, Portal and Identity surfaces.
- Technical multiplier: you coach Staff/Senior Engineers, lead communities of practice, publish reusable blueprints (pipelines, IaC modules, service templates), raise the hiring bar and improve decision quality through clear narratives.
- Member‑centred judgement: you work backwards from member outcomes and journey telemetry to invent on their behalf, ensuring MEP ships world‑class experiences across Mobile App, Member Portal and Identity that feel simple, personal and human.
- Values & culture: you role‑model Be Accountable, Be Curious, Be Collaborative, Be Brave, creating psychological safety, celebrating safe/fast releases and nurturing a culture of continuous improvement and craft excellence.
- Cross‑functional influence & risk judgement: you partner seamlessly with Platform Ownership, DevSecOps, Environments, Release, QE, Architecture, Risk and Audit — balancing speed with security, compliance‑as‑code and audit‑ready evidence
Ready to Make an Impact?
Join us and help build the next generation of digital solutions at Skipton, the happiest place to live in Great Britain. This is your chance to innovate, collaborate, and create technology that truly matters.
Plan your journey
The Bailey, Skipton, United Kingdom, BD23 1AP Google maps
Skipton core benefits
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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.