Principal Software Engineer 3 month contract

This is a contract role for 3 months starting in May ideally.

At Collinson we dont just build technology we power the experiences behind some of the worlds most recognised travel financial services and retail brands.

Our solutions help global brands acquire engage and retain millions of customers worldwide. Our flagship product is Priority Pass the worlds leading airport experiences programme trusted by travellers across more than 170 countries.

Key clients include Mastercard American Express Cathay Pacific British Airways LATAM Flying Blue Accor EasyJet HSBC Chase HDFC.

Our mission is focused on doing good beyond profit which for us means we seek out opportunities for our people to share in our success and that we give back to the communities and people within which we work.

Never short of ambition the success of our business is delivered through the diverse and talented team of over 2200 global colleagues.

We are now looking for a visionary Principal Engineer to help define the next generation of our platform.

Why this role matters:

This is more than a leadership position. Its an opportunity to influence the architecture scalability and future direction of a truly global technology ecosystem.

Youll lead the technical vision for one of the most critical pillars in our Engineering organisation our API platform driving innovation across synchronous and asynchronous services built with REST GraphQL Kafka and cloud-native technologies.

Youll work hands-on with modern engineering tools and practices partnering with talented squads to solve complex distributed systems challenges at scale. From AI-driven engineering initiatives to highly observable event-driven architectures this is a role for someone who thrives on building exceptional systems and empowering exceptional teams.

What you will be doing:

• Defining the architectural vision for our API ecosystem

• Leading the design and development of scalable cloud-native distributed systems

• Building high-throughput event-driven services using Kafka

• Driving engineering excellence across security observability performance and maintainability

• Mentoring and coaching engineers and technical leaders across multiple squads

• Collaborating closely with Product Delivery and Engineering leadership to shape strategic technical decisions

• Championing modern development practices including TDD CI/CD Infrastructure as Code and automated testing

• Exploring and embedding AI-powered engineering capabilities into our workflows and platform

Our technology stack:

Youll be working with a modern forward-thinking stack including:

• TypeScript ( & React)

• AWS (EKS Lambda Aurora RDS)

• Kubernetes

• GraphQL & REST APIs

• Kafka

• Terraform & Helm

• GitHub Actions

• DataDog

• Salesforce integrations

What we are looking for:

Youre a technically exceptional engineering leader who still loves being close to the code.

What you bring:

• Proven experience architecting large-scale distributed systems in the cloud

• Deep expertise in APIs event-driven architectures and containerised applications

• Strong knowledge of AWS and modern DevOps practices

• Experience leading engineering teams and influencing technical direction across squads

• A passion for software craftsmanship clean architecture and scalable design

• A mentoring mindset and a collaborative leadership style

• Curiosity around AI and emerging engineering technologies

Experience with Salesforce or enterprise CRM ecosystems is a strong advantage.

What Collinson Offers:

• Flexible and hybrid working options

• Work from anywhere 8 weeks a year

• Generous parental leave and family-friendly policies

• Career development mentorship and training

• A supportive inclusive culture with employee resource groups and diversity initiatives.

Collinson is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes differences in all their forms including: colour race ethnicity gender identity sexual orientation neurodivergence family status age individuals with disabilities and people from all backgrounds cultures and experiences as we strongly believe this contributes to our on-going success.

We are focused on continually evolving our purpose driven high performing culture providing an environment where our people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and do interesting and meaningful work. Our company values are: Take Action Do the right thing One team and Be insight led. These help guide everything we do internally in terms of how we think act and interact right through to how we deliver value to our customers and clients.

In your application please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example - she/her/hers he/him/his they/them/theirs etc).

If you need any extra support throughout the interview process then please email us at