Principal Engineering Lead

Company Description

We're ASOS, the online retailer for fashion lovers all around the world. 

We exist to give our customers the confidence to be whoever they want to be, and that goes for our people too. At ASOS, you're free to be your true self without judgement, and channel your creativity into a platform used by millions. 

Everyone needs some help showing up as their best self. We're Disability Confident Committed - let our Talent team know if you need any reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process 

Job Description

As the Principal Engineering Lead within the Michelangelo team, you will provide senior technical and organisational leadership across the Michelangelo workstream, shaping how we build, scale and evolve customer-facing experiences across the ASOS apps and website. This role goes beyond the scope of a single squad: you will help define the technical direction across multiple teams, create alignment where there are dependencies and trade-offs, and ensure engineering decisions support both immediate delivery needs and the longer-term evolution of the platform. While the role is cross-functional in scope, the ideal candidate will bring a strong back-end and architecture background, using that depth to guide decisions across the wider engineering landscape. 

You’ll set technical direction and standards across a broad area, drive architecture and engineering excellence, and partner closely with Product, Design, Engineering Leadership and Data/Analytics to turn customer and business needs into coherent, measurable outcomes. You’ll play a key role in helping teams make good decisions at the right level, balancing pace with quality, and local optimisation with platform consistency. You’ll also be expected to influence senior stakeholders, shape investment and prioritisation conversations, and create the conditions for teams to move quickly without creating unnecessary operational or architectural drag. 

The ASOS’ mobile app revamp programme is designed to create a more immersive, personalised shopping experience across key customer journeys, including the Homepage, PLPs, PDPs and Bag. It focuses on making discovery easier, shopping more inspirational, and the experience more frictionless, with recent releases introducing a more cohesive homepage, a dedicated “For You” experience, and more immersive browsing improvements such as larger imagery and simplified interactions. The team is prioritising innovation, aiming to lead the market by launching advanced features such as Virtual Try On. The programme is highly impact-led, using experimentation and data to continuously validate, learn and iterate. 

Responsibilities 

• Define and evolve technical direction across the app revamp workstream, ensuring architectural cohesion across customer-facing experiences while balancing delivery speed with long-term sustainability 
• Provide leadership across multiple teams, helping resolve complex dependencies, technical trade-offs and delivery risks before they become blockers, while overseeing both full-time and contractor engineers to ensure smooth communication and shared practices across both 
• Partner with Product, Design, Engineering Leadership and Data to shape strategy, align roadmaps and turn customer problems into measurable outcomes 
• Own and influence key architectural decisions across app, web and supporting services, ensuring solutions are scalable, maintainable and aligned with the broader platform direction 
• Champion an experimentation-first approach, embedding A/B testing, measurement and iteration into the way teams build, validate and evolve experiences 
• Raise the engineering bar across teams by turning standards into practical approaches for performance, reliability, code quality, testing, observability and operational readiness 
• Coach and develop Engineering Leads, senior engineers and other technical leaders, acting as a multiplier for decision quality and team effectiveness 
• Support organisation-level planning by informing technical investment, workforce shape, hiring decisions and sequencing across a high-priority programme 
• Create alignment across teams with a strong back-end and architecture focus, while working effectively across mobile, web and platform capabilities to support the full customer experience 
• Represent engineering in senior and exec-level discussions, communicating technical complexity clearly and constructively to support effective decision-making 

Qualifications

• Proven experience operating at Principal, Staff or equivalent leadership level, setting technical direction across multiple domains, products or a broad technical domain 
• Strong background in back-end engineering and software architecture, ideally in high-scale consumer products, with the ability to lead effectively across cross-functional environments that include mobile and web teams 
• Demonstrated experience defining architecture across a broad landscape, making decisions that balance short-term delivery with long-term platform health, maintainability and scalability 
• Track record of leading complex initiatives that span multiple teams or disciplines, influencing without relying on direct authority and creating alignment across competing priorities 
• Experience working in collaborative, product-led environments with Engineering, Product, Design and Data, using insight and evidence to drive decisions 
• Strong understanding of experimentation, A/B testing and data-informed decision making, with the ability to use metrics to validate ideas and guide iteration 
• Experience improving engineering standards and ways of working at scale, turning broad principles into practical habits and guidance for teams 
• Evidence of developing other technical leaders, including mentoring senior engineers and Engineering Leads and helping grow organisational capability beyond your immediate area 
• Comfortable operating in fast-paced, evolving programmes, managing ambiguity and making pragmatic trade-offs while keeping the longer-term direction intact 
• Strong communication skills and credibility with senior and exec-level stakeholders, with the ability to explain technical complexity clearly, challenge constructively and influence direction 

Additional Information

BeneFITS’ 

• Employee discount (hello ASOS discount!) 
• Employee sample sales 
• 25 days paid annual leave + an extra celebration day for a special moment 
• Discretionary bonus scheme 
• Private medical care scheme 
• Flexible benefits allowance - which you can choose to take as extra cash, or use towards other benefits 
• Opportunity for personalised learning and in-the-moment experiences that enable you to thrive and excel in your role