Principal Software Engineer

Software Engineer (Simulation & Frameworks) - Senior/Principal

£70k–£90k | UK Remote (travel to UK/US hubs) | Permanent

We're working with a pioneering deep-tech company building next-generation photonic computing systems - using light, not electricity, to power the AI and cryptography workloads of tomorrow. It's a genuinely novel architecture, built by a small, ambitious team with big backing.

They're now expanding their Architecture group and looking for two experienced engineers to help build the in-house simulation environment behind their flagship compute platform - the tool that lets the whole team understand, test, and refine the system before it ever hits silicon.

What we're after:

✅ 10+ years' Python or C/C++

✅ Experience with event-based simulators (e.g. SimPy)

✅ Strong grasp of SoC and memory architectures

✅ Comfortable writing specs, test plans and reports

✅ Confident communicating with technical and non-technical stakeholders

✅ Bonus points for AI/ML, HPC, cryptography, Rust or CI/CD exposure

What's in it for you?

💡 Work on a genuinely novel compute architecture, not another CRUD stack

🏡 Fully remote, with occasional travel to UK/US hubs

💰 Competitive salary plus bonus and pension matching

🩺 Comprehensive healthcare

🌴 Generous time off

🚀 Real influence over how the architecture takes shape

You'll sit right at the software-hardware boundary, building the metrics, tooling and integrations (PyTorch, ONNX, HEIR) that make rapid bring-up possible - and mentoring others as the team grows around you.

If you like the idea of shaping something genuinely new rather than maintaining someone else's roadmap, we'd love to hear from you.