Principal Product Engineer

Principal Product Engineer | AI-Native Product Development

Hybrid working, one day per week on-site.

We’re working with a successful and growing Irish software company to hire a Principal Product Engineer for a newly created role at the intersection of Product, Engineering, Payments and AI-native software development.

This isn't a traditional Product Manager role, nor is it a traditional Software Engineer role.

You'll decide what gets built – and build a meaningful amount of it yourself.

You'll take ownership of product decisions, define priorities, write precise specifications and use AI coding agents to prototype, build, test and ship production software. You'll also help shape and deliver new payments and eCommerce capabilities, including payment and POS integrations that unlock commercial opportunities within an established customer and supplier ecosystem.

What you'll do

• Own product decisions across the product estate, determining what gets built, improved, fixed or switched off.
• Set priorities across competing business needs, balancing customer value, commercial opportunities and engineering capacity.
• Translate business and customer problems into precise specifications, acceptance criteria and test cases that engineers and AI agents can build from.
• Prototype, build and ship production software using AI coding agents as a core part of your development workflow.
• Design and deliver payment integrations, payment APIs, checkout experiences, POS integrations and other transactional product capabilities.
• Review AI-generated code critically, validate test results and take responsibility for the quality of what reaches production.
• Use product usage data and SQL or equivalent tools to measure outcomes, inform decisions and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Work closely with Engineering, Architecture and DevOps on complex development and shared technical foundations.
• Engage with customers and internal teams to understand real-world problems and turn them into valuable product improvements.
• Own measurable product and business outcomes, including adoption and revenue, and change direction when the evidence supports it.

What we're looking for

• 10+ years of experience across Product Engineering, Software Engineering, Product Ownership or a comparable role involving independent product decision-making and hands-on delivery.
• Demonstrable, hands-on payments experience building payment integrations, payment APIs, checkout systems, POS integrations or commerce platforms. This is essential.
• A strong track record of product judgement, prioritisation and making commercial and technical trade-offs.
• The technical ability to prototype independently, write production code and take changes through to release.
• Daily, habitual use of AI coding agents such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot or similar to build and ship software.
• Strong technical judgement to evaluate AI-generated code, identify potential issues and ensure production quality.
• Experience writing build-ready specifications, acceptance criteria and test cases.
• Confidence working with modern web and mobile codebases and analysing product data using SQL or equivalent.
• Experience working autonomously, taking ownership of a product area and delivering outcomes in a fast-moving environment.
• A practical, hands-on mindset: someone who would rather build a working prototype, test assumptions and learn from the results than spend weeks discussing an idea.

The technology environment includes Angular, Ionic/Capacitor, MySQL, AWS and an Nx monorepo. Experience with this exact stack is not essential; transferable experience with modern web and mobile technologies is welcome.

Why this role?

The company is deliberately moving towards an AI-powered software development lifecycle, integrating AI into specification, prototyping, development, testing, review and delivery.

You'll have the opportunity to shape product direction and help build new payments and eCommerce capabilities, connecting customers, suppliers and merchants through valuable transactional products.

This is a senior, high-autonomy opportunity for someone who combines strategic product judgement with hands-on engineering. You'll have the ownership to identify opportunities, make decisions, build solutions and take them through to production, with support from engineering specialists where needed.

We're looking for someone who is excited by the fact that the distance between deciding what to build and actually shipping it has collapsed.

If you're an experienced product builder who understands payments, embraces AI-native development and wants to take ownership from idea to production, we'd like to talk.

Apply Today!

At Hadfield Green, we are an equal opportunities employer and actively welcome applicants from all backgrounds.

We're not a one-size-fits-all type of organisation, so if you need an accommodation or adjustment in advance of meeting due to a disability or impairment, just let us know and we'd be delighted to assist