Principal Software Engineer
Location: Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Contract Duration: 12 months
Rate: 63.83 p/h PAYE (73.11 inc. holiday rate) OR 87.04 p/h Umbrella
We seek an engineer with recent high-integrity or safety-critical industry experience (defence, aerospace, or similar), or eligible for UK security clearance.
Role Overview
An experienced Principal Software Engineer is required to join a well-established Test Engineering community, supporting advanced defence and aerospace programmes. The role focuses on developing software solutions for complex test systems used in cutting-edge radar and aerospace platforms.
The successful candidate will play a key technical leadership role, contributing to the design, development, and delivery of high-quality test software while working closely with multi-disciplinary engineering teams and stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and deliver software solutions within defined work packages, ensuring stakeholder requirements are met
- Elicit, analyse, prioritise, and manage stakeholder needs to deliver optimal technical solutions
- Produce high-quality, robust, and well-documented code, ensuring outputs are maintained under configuration management
- Provide progress reporting, planning, and technical updates to line management
- Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to ensure software architecture alignment across the wider programme
- Apply appropriate tools and techniques for test equipment and test system software design
- Identify, resolve, and drive solutions to emerging technical issues, escalating complex risks where required
- Mentor, coach, and support the development of engineers within the wider team
Essential Skills & Experience
- Strong experience designing and developing software using C
- Proven expertise with NI LabWindows/CVI
- Familiarity with NI TestStand
- Experience working in test engineering or test system software environments
Desirable Skills & Experience
- Development of low-level software drivers
- Software development for automated or complex test systems
- Experience working within a structured development process framework
- Agile development experience and use of modern collaboration/tooling platforms
- Familiarity with configuration management, defect tracking, and peer review practices
