Senior Principal Software Engineer Reports to: Head of Engineering Team: Engineering About e-therapeutics e-therapeutics (ETX) is a UK-headquartered techbio company with an innovative proprietary computational platform designed to enhance drug discovery and a proprietary RNA interference platform, able to silence any gene in the liver. e-therapeutics combines two cutting-edge technologies and is uniquely positioned at the interface of the hugely promising fields of AI and RNAi, currently advancing a pipeline of highly differentiated RNAi therapeutics in areas of high unmet need with the first programs entering IND-enabling studies. Following a recent fundraise and to support the company's next phase of growth, we are expanding our team and looking for talented and motivated individuals to join our dynamic, 'do what's needed' culture. We enjoy our work and strive to create an exciting place to work in an environment where everyone feels comfortable to express their views and opinions. About the role: You'll be a joining a small agile team with a wide range of skills, working very closely with others across the company to build and maintain our computational drug discovery platform. This is a unique opportunity to play a significant role in building software products that have never been built before, anywhere. You will be the expert in the team on building cloud-native applications, guiding us in best practice and patterns. As the most senior member, you will play a leadership role - actively identifying and guiding the team through technical and operational challenges. You will work closely with the Head of Engineering to establish and reinforce standards in the team, to ensure quality and delivery. Line management responsibilities will follow in due course. The engineering team has a very varied portfolio; Java services in Kubernetes, data integration pipelines, cloud native large language model applications, a structured and unstructured data platform, and GUI applications. We work through the entire product life cycle, from end user requirements gathering, solution design, architecture, build, test, deploy, and support. You will be involved in all aspects of software engineering from day one, and pushed to learn and progress as far as you are able. Being on the cutting edge means that work will be interesting, exciting, and challenging - and you will be making a worthwhile impact on the treatment of important diseases. We believe that the best software is produced when the people building it are tightly integrated with their users, so you will also get the opportunity to learn some molecular biology and medicine along the way Responsibilities This role is intended to have a large proportion of individual contribution, but to bring to the team the advantage of your wealth of experience and knowledge to enable them to contribute successfully and learn from your example. Using your experience of successfully delivering projects to lead and mentor the team in working processes and standards, and engineering best practice and concepts - to be their first point of reference for difficulties or advice throughout the software life cycle Working with teams across the company to design, build, and deploy new software products to aid in drug discovery Monitoring and maintaining deployed software in line with our Service Level Agreement Being the technical leader on architecting native applications in AWS Autonomously identifying and providing solutions for technical or process problems in the team, escalating where appropriate Proactively supporting team members and wider company in achieving the company's goals Looking out for improvements to our ways of working Working closely with the Head of Engineering to: Ensure delivery of features/projects in an agile methodology to the satisfaction of our stakeholders Constantly review, implement, and monitor working processes and standards in the team Review important documents and decisions e.g. design/technology choices, Incident reports Align engineering team efforts with company priorities - developing strategic and innovative directions for our platform Promote a "team first" approach to collaborative working - optimising our output in quantity and quality, while maintaining a happy team through knowledge and process sharing Communicate effectively with external teams / C-suite on work ongoing in the team After successful onboarding, this role will include line management duties for 2 members of the existing team, these will include: Monthly One to One sessions to guide career development or performance issues Annual appraisals Holiday, absence, and expense approvals Participating in recruitment Skills Comfortable in a senior or leadership position in teams Generalist with a background in full-stack, end-to-end cloud application design and development Experience of designing, planning, delivering to project deadlines/sprint goals Strong experience with infrastructure as code on AWS using a wide range of AWS services; ECS and networking especially, but including S3, SQS, RDS, CloudWatch Python application or Java expert, but keen polyglot - very confident in at least one other mainstream language Comfortable with SQL and noSQL databases - both populating and querying Experience working with non-technical users - gathering and refining complex requirements Able to communicate equally well with C-suite and scientists About you Enjoys the responsibility that comes with experience Pragmatic - interested in solving real-world problems, not technology Honest, open, and authentic Excellent communication, time management and organisational skills A believer in processes with a keen eye for spotting inefficiencies Team focused - you enjoy working to shared goals and helping others Curious, with a desire and aptitude to learn new skills and contribute outside your direct role