Principal Engineer - Contract

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Principal AI .NET Engineer to partner with client engineering teams in transforming software delivery through AI-assisted engineering, intelligent automation, and modern software development practices. This role combines deep technical expertise with strategic advisory and coaching responsibilities, helping organizations improve software quality, delivery cadence, and engineering effectiveness across the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC).

The successful candidate will assess existing engineering practices, architecture, tooling, and delivery processes to identify opportunities for enhancement—particularly through the adoption of AI-driven development workflows, agent-based engineering, automation, and modern DevOps practices. You will work closely with engineering leaders, architects, and delivery teams to implement scalable improvements that accelerate delivery while strengthening quality, compliance, and maintainability.

This is a highly consultative and hands-on leadership role requiring expertise across software architecture, AI-assisted development, engineering enablement, and team mentorship.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices to improve productivity, code quality, and delivery speed.
• Design and implement agent harness engineering solutions to automate development, testing, and operational workflows.
• Identify and deliver opportunities for AI-driven automation across the SDLC.
• Assess client engineering environments to understand current-state SDLC processes, including architecture, domain boundaries, release strategies, quality practices, and governance.
• Conduct value stream analysis to identify bottlenecks and improve engineering flow, quality, and cadence.
• Define and implement transformation roadmaps focused on automation and engineering excellence.
• Provide leadership across planning, solution architecture, development, testing, and release engineering.
• Design and build enterprise applications using .NET and modern frontend frameworks such as Angular or similar JavaScript technologies.
• Promote best practices in software architecture, maintainability, scalability, and secure engineering.
• Define test automation strategies across unit, integration, and end-to-end testing.
• Design and optimise Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.
• Support teams in adopting effective branching strategies, including GitFlow and trunk-based development.
• Coach engineering teams on AI engineering practices, software craftsmanship, and modern delivery approaches.
• Mentor technical leaders and delivery teams to build long-term capability and continuous improvement.

Required Experience

• Strong experience as a Principal or Staff-level .NET Software Engineer
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g. GitHub Copilot)
• Experience with Angular or similar frontend JavaScript frameworks.
• Expertise in test automation, engineering quality practices, and SDLC optimisation.
• Strong experience with CI/CD and modern version control strategies.
• Ability to perform value stream analysis and identify delivery improvement opportunities.
• Proven experience coaching and mentoring engineering teams.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and consulting skills.

Nice to Have

• Experience modernising engineering practices in large enterprise environments
• Experience working with Microsoft CRM or SaaS platform integrations
• Exposure to integration platforms such as TIBCO