Principal Software Engineer Level 6

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