Principal Software Engineer (Platform)

Cazoo, is the ultimate destination for car enthusiasts and buyers alike! As a leader in the market, we pride ourselves on providing unparalleled search tools, expert car guides, insightful reviews, and a comprehensive vehicle price guide. Our mission is simple: to empower buyers to find their perfect car efficiently and with confidence, while also helping automotive retailers reach millions of eager buyers.

At Cazoo, you'll be part of a team that's revolutionising the way people buy and sell cars. If you're ready to drive your career forward in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, Cazoo is the place for you. Join us and be a part of shaping the future of automotive retail!

We are looking for Principal Software Engineer

Reports To: Director of Technology

Contract Type: Permanent

Location: Remote, UK based

About the role:

We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to help shape the next generation of Cazoo's technology platform.

We're undertaking a significant modernisation of our existing Azure-based architecture, moving towards more scalable, cloud-native and event-driven services. This is an opportunity to influence how our core platform evolves, improve the experience of our engineering teams and build the foundations that support our customer-facing products.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role, combining software engineering, architecture and platform strategy. You'll spend around half your time actively contributing to engineering delivery, while also helping set technical direction, mentoring engineers and driving initiatives across teams.

You'll be responsible for:

• Building and modernising software: Design, develop and deliver scalable backend services, APIs and event-driven systems, including the safe migration and retirement of legacy applications.

• Shaping software architecture: Make key decisions around service boundaries, distributed systems, cloud-native design and how our platform evolves.

• Remaining hands-on: Write production code, solve complex engineering problems, review pull requests and work directly alongside other engineers.

• Driving technical direction: Help shape and deliver our engineering roadmap, balancing long-term architectural improvements with commercial and product priorities.

• Improving developer experience: Design and evolve shared services, reusable components and engineering tooling that make it easier for teams to build, test and deliver software.

• Leading engineering practices: Establish consistent engineering standards, contribute to engineering guilds or chapters and drive technical improvements across multiple squads.

• Championing engineering excellence: Improve reliability, scalability, observability, performance and maintainability across our production systems.

• Developing engineers: Mentor and support engineers, facilitate technical discussions and help teams make sound architectural decisions.

• Embracing AI-assisted engineering: Help establish effective practices for AI development tools, improving engineering productivity while maintaining appropriate quality and security standards.

You'll have genuine ownership and influence, with the opportunity to make meaningful architectural decisions while remaining close to the technology and people delivering them.

What we ideally looking for;

• Extensive hands-on backend software engineering experience, designing, building and operating business-critical production systems, ideally within a product-led technology environment.

• Proficiency in a modern backend language, ideally TypeScript/Node.js, although we're open to engineers with strong transferable experience in languages such as Java.

• Strong software architecture expertise, with experience designing distributed systems, microservices, APIs and event-driven applications.

• Experience modernising complex software platforms, including decomposing legacy applications, introducing new architectural patterns and migrating production workloads safely.

• Experience building cloud-native applications and services, preferably on Azure, although strong AWS or GCP experience is also relevant.

• Demonstrable Principal-level technical leadership, setting architectural direction, establishing engineering standards and influencing technical decisions across multiple engineering teams. Experience leading engineering chapters, guilds or equivalent communities would be particularly valuable.

• A strong understanding of modern engineering practices, including automated testing, CI/CD, observability, performance optimisation and maintaining production reliability.

• Familiarity with cloud platform technologies, such as Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform and managed cloud services, with an understanding of how these support software development and delivery.

• Sound engineering judgement, including balancing technical debt against delivery priorities, evaluating build-versus-buy decisions and making pragmatic architectural trade-offs.

• An interest in AI-assisted software development, including tools such as Claude Code, Cursor or GitHub Copilot, and how they can be used responsibly to improve engineering productivity.

Experience working with high-traffic consumer products, marketplaces, classifieds or automotive platforms would be advantageous.

We're particularly interested in engineers who have progressed into broader architectural and technical leadership responsibilities while remaining actively involved in building software.

Perks & Benefits

Here’s how we back you:

Financials 💰

• We more than match your commitment to your pension, so when you contribute 6% , we put in 9%, taking your total up to 15% of your base salary.

• Quarterly value-led awards with generous cash prizes.

• Referral Bonus: Recommend a colleague, get £2,000.

Work-Life 🏖️

• 25 days (plus bank holidays)

• Family Enhanced leave after 6 months of service:

• Maternity/Pregnant Parent Leave: 20 weeks at 100% pay,.

• Paternity/Non-birth Parent Leave: 12 weeks at 100% pay.

• Volunteer Days: We offer 2 volunteer days a year so you can help out wherever matters to you.

Health & Peace of Mind 🏩

Comprehensive cover so you (and your favourite people) have the care you need.

• AXA Private Healthcare: High-level coverage for you, partners, and dependents—including pre-existing conditions.

• Bupa Dental: Level 2 coverage for cashback on preventative, restorative and emergency care.

• Private GP: 24/7 digital access via Help@Hand.

• Income Protection: 13 weeks of sick pay, before going onto Long term Illness cover with Canada Life

• Life Assurance: 4x basic salary covered by Unum.

• Specialist Support: Free counseling and menopause/fertility support via Peppy.

Your Growth 🌱