Principal Software Engineer - Technical Lead
Up to £60k + bonus + benefits
Reference: WUK769
Please note: Applicants for this position must have authorization to work in the UK.Role
In this role, you will own, define and lead the long-term architectural and technical direction of the Sophos detection engine and related security product set. You will provide broad insight and architectural recommendations to the product and business strategies through engaging with a range of product teams across Global Engineering. You will partner with SophosLabs to achieve creative technical solutions for next generation detection. You will use your skills in communicating and presenting to share your technical expertise, improving our products and process and promoting best practice.
You will have a passion for malware and spam detection and a vision for our next-generation security and control technology. Your drive to inspire and guide the execution of that vision and your experience of influencing, engaging and enthusing cross-functional stakeholders to generate ownership and commitment, allied to your unique collaboration with SophosLabs, will mean that you will enjoy the challenges that this role presents.
Main duties
- Monitor market trends and new technologies that would affect the product area, anticipating opportunities to take advantage of them
- Partner with SophosLabs stakeholders and senior researchers to derive the technical implementation of the detection roadmap, influencing with ideas and functional recommendations to prototype requirements and driving the innovation of product technology to fulfil them
- Review project requirements and ensure technical cohesion across multiple projects, products and technologies and make functional proposals to meet them
- Define the long-term technical plans for an asset or group of assets seeking input from other Technical Leads, to satisfy the business, product and technology strategies and give visibility of future engineering developments to the executive and senior management
- Provide technical guidance to senior management to facilitate the generation of the Sophos business strategy and objectives
- Propose, promote and drive the adoption of new design and development approaches to improve overall quality, reliability and speed of implementation across program or department
- Monitor and review the product development throughout the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), identifying exceptions and taking action where appropriate to ensure the business, product and technology strategies are met
- Review requirement specifications or equivalent for coverage, identify areas that require further clarification, and suggest alternative approaches to Product Management, in line with business needs
- Write software specifications based on product requirements in line with agreed process
- Design products or systems in line with asset technical strategy, specified project timescales, quality and functionality requirements as agreed with the Lead Developer
- Conduct and participate in peer reviews of code, designs and specifications in line with agreed process, ensuring adherence to standards and making suggestions to increase quality to the author
- Suggest improvements to standards and procedures across global Engineering and the wider organisation and take ownership for the implementation
- Mentor and coach Technical Leads and other engineers on technologies, processes and products to enable them to contribute more effectively
- Conduct presentations to cross-functional groups and external audiences on products and technologies
Experience and skills
Essential:
- Key technical leadership, providing direction and support to developers and other stakeholders implementing functionality
- Architectural design and guidance on technical solutions and systems, influencing and persuading cross-functional stakeholders to generate ownership and commitment
- Developed commercial software products through all stages of a SDLC
- Ownership for the technical success of a technology or product
- Provided technical guidance to senior management with ensuing fulfilment
- Provided articulate and effective formal presentations to a range of internal and external audiences, 10-100+, matching information and delivery to audience
- Proposed and driven the adoption of new design and development approaches across a department
- Reviewed multiple project requirements and ensured technical cohesion of projects, products and technologies
- Made recommendations to solve system-wide software issues and driven implementation
- C and cross-platform development of commercial software products
- Algorithms e.g. hashing, pattern-matching, space and time efficiency
- Driving and developing product optimisation and performance
Desirable:
- Representing an area of technology at industry forums and conferences internationally
- Experience of commercial design and implementation using COM
- Script language development – Perl, Python, Bash, Tcl
- Made improvements to standards and procedures across Engineering and the wider organisation
- SCM (Software Configuration Management) tools, ideally Perforce
Benefits
The remuneration package includes:
- Annual holiday entitlement of 25 days, which can increase to 28 days
- Profit-related bonus scheme
- Group personal pension scheme
- Private medical insurance
- Critical illness insurance
- Death in service policy (life assurance)
- Permanent health insurance
- Travel insurance
- Personal accident cover
Working conditions at Sophos are very good and include:
- Subsidised staff restaurant
- Free beverages, fruit and pastries
