Principal Software Engineer

You’ll be a Technical Leader, unblock the engineering team by resolving complex technical impasses, standardising engineering practices, and owning cross-functional initiatives. You'll still be a highly hands-on engineer, responsible for rapidly prototyping, shipping MVPs, and turning product ideas into polished user experiences. You’ll work across the stack, collaborating closely with product, design, and engineering teams while operating with a high degree of independence.   What you'll do   - Build and ship new product features end-to-end - Lead rapid prototyping and MVP development - Develop modern frontend applications using TypeScript, Vue 3 Composition API, and Tailwind - Contribute to backend services using Node, Bun, Koa, PostgreSQL, Prisma, and AWS - Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to shape product direction - Improve performance, reliability, and developer experience across the platfor - Support on hiring, performance and technical roadmaps.   What you'll need   - Extensive experience building modern frontend applications with TypeScript and Vue3 - Solid backend experience with Node-based services and relational databases - Experience working with PostgreSQL, Prisma, AWS, and REST APIs - Comfortable moving quickly, making pragmatic decisions, and shipping iteratively - Strong communication and collaboration skills - Able to work independently in a hybrid environment - Ideally have been in early stage start-ups going through growth and technical challenges   What you'll get - Unlimited Holidays! - Share options - If Cytix wins, you should too. - Enhanced maternity pay. - Pension - 8% (3% employer, 5% employee) - Private Healthcare (inc. dental, optical and hearing) - Octopus car scheme - Drive electric through salary sacrifice - Dog-friendly office. - Inclusivity as standard - A team where you can do your best work as yourself, no asterisks. About Cytix - Software never stops changing. Teams ship new code every day, through tickets, pull requests, releases, and increasingly with AI in the mix, but the way security keeps up with all that change hasn't really moved on. That's the problem we're solving. Cytix helps organisations understand which software changes actually matter, what should happen next, and how to prove the right call was made. Security understood, in other words. We're a small team with big plans, so every person we hire genuinely shapes what Cytix becomes. That's why we're upfront about our five values: we interview for all of them, and they matter to us more than a perfect CV. They're things you do, not things you are, so have a read and see if they sound like you.   Make the first move. When the goal is clear but the path isn't, you get moving rather than waiting for perfect instructions. If you're blocked, you make a sensible call, say what you're assuming, and explain how you'd course-correct. We'd rather you act and be slightly wrong than sit still.   Find the smarter path. You ask why before how. You dig into what the real problem is instead of just building what the spec says, and you're happy to question 'that's how it's always been done' when the reason behind it has gone stale.   See it through. When something's yours, it lands. No loose ends, no surprises for whoever picks it up next. You keep people posted when things change, and if something falls between roles, you catch it.   Raise the bar. You do the best job possible in the time you've got, whether that's a day or a month. Sometimes that means deep craft; sometimes the smartest move is quick and scrappy. It's about good judgement, and we hold each other to it without blame or politics.   Play to win. You care about the mission but don't take yourself too seriously. You say 'I' when things go wrong and 'we' when they go right, trust teammates to do things their own way, and bring a bit of humour when the pressure's on. Sound like you on a normal working day? We'd love to meet you.