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Principal Software Engineer

London, UK
Principal Engineer
Actively hiring

Principal Software Engineer

loveholidays
London, UK
Principal Engineer
loveholidays
Actively hiring

hackajob is partnering with loveholidays to fill this position. Create a profile to be automatically considered for this role—and others that match your experience.

 

Why Technology at loveholidays?

At loveholidays - we trailblaze together. We’re on a mission to open the world to everyone, giving our customers’ unlimited choice, unmatched ease and unmissable value for their next getaway. Our team is the driving force behind our role as our customers’ personal holiday expert - the smart way to get away.

Technology at loveholidays underpins our vision to become the most loved OTA in Europe. We drive cutting-edge innovation and technical excellence to futureproof the business. Our systems process trillions of daily holiday offers, we deploy over a thousand times a month, serving thousands of requests per second. This is where you can accelerate your growth by solving complex challenges and broadening your skillset.

Join us to create impact for our future in an exciting new chapter, owning your success and contributing to shared goals. We actively talk about technology and adhere to our key technology principles that have guided us this far. We are growing and have ambitious plans to expand across Europe, employing the best minds and technology to let us do this.

 

The impact you’ll have:

Performance, accessibility, scalability and a leading UX are all incredibly important to us at loveholidays. We regularly spend time looking at how to make things better for our customers (and for ourselves) through new technologies and pushing the boundaries of front-end engineering, such as pioneering adoption of web components. As a Principal Engineer, you'll leverage your frontend expertise as the foundation for enabling technical excellence across our entire engineering organisation, working hands-on within delivery teams to drive innovation and scale successful solutions. If the questions below resonate with you, then this could be your next role:

  • Are you excited about leveraging AI tooling to accelerate development and deliver AI-powered features?

  • Do you get energized by seeing other engineers succeed and grow their technical skills?

  • Does working embedded within delivery teams, pairing with engineers on complex challenges excite you?

  • Have you helped teams adopt new technologies or architectural patterns through collaborative delivery?

  • Have you identified successful technical solutions in one team and helped implement them across multiple teams?

  • Do you care about the p95 render-to-string millisecond performance of Preact?

  • Have you been frustrated with how inaccessible sites are and wish that we went back to the basics and do that really well?

Your role as an engineer extends far beyond individual frontend optimization. You'll work hands-on within teams to solve complex technical challenges while building their long-term capabilities, facilitate cross-team knowledge transfer, and champion technical excellence that drives measurable business outcomes. As a technical enabler, you'll strengthen our engineering organization's capability through practical collaboration, knowledge sharing, and ensuring our technical decisions directly support business success.

Your day-to-day:

You will be responsible for:

  • AI Innovation: Lead AI innovation and tool adoption for feature delivery, enabling teams to leverage AI capabilities for both development acceleration and customer-facing solutions

  • Team Development: Embed within delivery teams to provide hands-on technical leadership, pairing with engineers and role modelling excellence

  • Organisational Innovation: Identify successful technical patterns and architectural solutions from high-performing teams, then work hands-on with other teams to implement and adapt these approaches

  • Technical Excellence: Drive measurable technical excellence outcomes (performance, reliability, maintainability) by establishing and tracking KPIs that align with business objectives and facilitate continuous improvement

  • Performance Culture: Champion and evolve a performance culture across all engineering teams - We blog about performance regularly and will expect you to as well

  • External Advocacy: Promote loveholidays' technical excellence culture through activities like blogging and conference presentations

  • Vendor Management: Build and maintain strong relationships with key technology vendors to ensure access to the latest performance solutions

 

Your skillset:

  • Experience with AI-powered feature development and leveraging AI tooling for software delivery, with enthusiasm for transforming how we build and deliver software

  • Proven track record of working hands-on with engineering teams to solve complex technical challenges, building team capabilities and promoting sustainable practices

  • Seasoned facilitator who excels at pairing with engineers, leading technical discussions, and helping teams navigate architectural decisions through practical, hands-on collaboration

  • Ability to identify and scale successful technical patterns while connecting technical excellence to measurable business outcomes

  • Proven Experience: A track record of building and optimising scalable, high-performance websites

  • Technical Expertise: Deep understanding of web performance engineering principles, algorithms, software design, and relevant technologies (e.g. CDNs, WAFs, Edge Computing)

 

Desirable:

  • Fastly, Edge Compute platform

  • Preact or other front-end frameworks

  • Rust (we use this for our edge platforms)

  • Go

  • GCP

Perks of joining us:

  • Company pension contributions at 5%.

  • Individualised training budget for you to learn on the job and level yourself up.

  • Discounted holidays for you, your family and friends.

  • 25 days of holidays per annum (plus 8 public holidays) increases by 1 day for every second year of service, up to a maximum 30 days per annum.

  • Ability to buy and sell annual leave.

  • Cycle to work scheme, season ticket loan and eye care vouchers.

 

At loveholidays, we focus on developing an inclusive culture and environment that encourages personal growth and collective success. Each individual offers unique perspectives and ideas that increase the diversity and effectiveness of our teams. And we value the insight and potential you could bring on our continued journey.

The interview journey:

  1. 1st stage interview with a member of our Talent Team

  2. Introduction to loveholidays Engineering with our VP of Engineering (60 mins)

  3. Presentation/Case Study with our VP and CTO (60 mins)

  4. Technical interview with 2 of our Principal or Heads of Engineering (60 mins)

hackajob is partnering with loveholidays to fill this position. Create a profile to be automatically considered for this role—and others that match your experience.

 

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