Principal Engineer - Contract - Outside IR35

We are currently looking for an experience Principal Engineer to join us on a contract basis. This is a hybrid position and will require 3 days per week on client site in Central London. Role responsibilities: Define and drive technical strategy, architecture, and engineering standards across the Personalisation domain Design and deliver scalable systems supporting personalisation, search, recommendations, and ML-powered features Partner closely with Product, Data Science, and Design to deliver customer-centric solutions Lead and influence technical decision-making across multiple teams and platforms Mentor and support senior engineers, helping to raise the overall engineering capability Improve engineering quality, reliability, and productivity through best practices, tooling, and platform enhancemen Who you are: An experienced technical leader with a strong background in Java/Python and large-scale production systems Strong experience working with Machine Learning systems and collaborating with Data Science teams Skilled in system design and architecture, with the ability to deliver scalable, high-quality solutions Comfortable working across cross-functional environments with multiple stakeholders Passionate about growing others and driving engineering excellence A strong communicator who can influence technical and business decisions at all levels"