Principle Engineer

Title: Principle Engineer

Location: Primarily remote in Scotland, with some travel to Edinburgh.
Reports to: VP of Engineering

It's rare for companies to break out of the start-up stage, rarer still to become profitable and keep growing. At Hyble, we've done both, and we're not slowing down. 

We started as 12 people in a tech incubator, taking on a problem the entire beverage industry had quietly accepted as normal: why did it take weeks for a sales rep to get their customer the marketing support they needed to start selling?

We built the answer. Hyble is now the only end-to-end point-of-sale ecosystem built for the global beverage industry.  Active in 50+ markets, helping the world's leading drinks brands create, approve, print, and deliver fully compliant POS materials in hours, not weeks. From 10 venues to 10,000, we give brands complete control at every touchpoint.

High-Growth Scale-Up

We've delivered consistent revenue growth for eight consecutive years. Over the last three years alone, the business has grown 213% and reached profitability. That's a milestone that reflects years of deliberate, disciplined investment decisions that have paid off.

In 2023, we won a landmark contract with Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits, a $25 billion business and the largest wine and spirits distributor in the US. Today we're a 135+ person, award-winning MarTech company operating across three continents - with 70% of our revenue generated in the US and a sales pipeline exceeding $70 million.

The AI Opportunity

The next chapter is AI-first, and it's happening now.

We're not retrofitting AI onto an existing product. We're rebuilding around it - embedding AI at the core of how our platform thinks, personalises, and performs. The opportunity is significant: a traditional, relationship-driven industry that is ripe for disruption, and a product already trusted by the brands that matter most.

For senior hires, that means something specific: you arrive at the point where architecture decisions stick, where what you build becomes the standard, and where the market is still open enough for genuinely bold thinking to win.

What you’ll find here:

• Ownership without bureaucracy. You'll move at the pace of someone who has real authority, because you will. You won't inherit a fully packaged function. You'll shape how it operates across a growing international scale-up.

• Problems worth solving. The intersection of AI, distribution networks, and global beverage brands is not a solved space. You'll be figuring things out, not inheriting playbooks.

• Impact you can see. We're small enough that your decisions shape the product, the team, and the trajectory of the business and large enough that the scale of that impact is real.

We’re hiring a Principal Engineer who is just as energised by making the person next to them better as they are by writing great code.

The most valuable contribution you’ll make won’t come from producing architecture in isolation. It will come from working alongside engineers, helping them think through hard problems, and walking away having made both the solution and the person stronger. We want someone who leads from within, not from above.

Our engineering team has real talent and real potential. What it needs is someone who raises the ceiling, not just the floor. Someone who brings technical depth the team can genuinely learn from, working in partnership with the VP of Engineering to build a culture of strong technical thinking, commercial awareness, and continuous improvement.

You will be hands-on. You will write code. You will also own outcomes. Your biggest impact will come from the engineers around you getting better because of how you work, and from the platform getting meaningfully closer to where it needs to be.

You will: 

• Pair with engineers on complex technical challenges, solving problems together rather than solving them for them

• Take a leading role in Hyble’s AI transformation, helping the engineering organisation understand, adopt, and build with AI tools and integrations across the stack

• Lead Architecture Guild sessions, setting the technical direction of the platform and holding the team accountable to it

• Identify gaps in technical knowledge across the team and address them through mentoring, code review, and hands-on collaboration

• Drive improvements to code quality, architecture patterns, and engineering practices across the teams

• Own the transition of Hyble’s platform from a monolithic architecture toward an AI-ready, scalable foundation

• Lead AI integration work, including LLM pipelines, data architecture improvements, and intelligent feature development

• Be a trusted technical voice in conversations about build vs buy, platform strategy, and tooling decisions

• Help engineers develop commercial and product-led thinking, not just technical execution

• Contribute to hiring and technical assessment as the engineering organisation grows

Key Challenges 

We want to give you an honest picture of what you’re walking into.

• Raising the technical ceiling. The engineering team has capable people who are ready to grow. The challenge is building the habits, practices, and culture that take them from good to genuinely strong. That doesn’t happen by telling people what to do. It happens by working alongside them consistently.

• Leading the AI transition. AI-first is the direction. Getting a team of engineers to genuinely adopt AI in their day-to-day work, not as a gimmick but as a real productivity and quality multiplier, requires someone who can demonstrate it, not just advocate for it.

• Evolving a live platform. Hyble’s platform serves enterprise clients who depend on it. Improving the architecture, increasing test coverage, and moving toward a more scalable foundation all need to happen without breaking what’s already working.

• Building trust fast. The team has been through a period of change. The Principal Engineer will need to earn credibility through consistency, technical depth, and genuine investment in the people around them.

What Good Looks Like at 6 Months 

We want you to be able to measure your own success. Here is what we’d expect to see:

• Engineers across the teams are visibly improving their technical judgment, not just their output

• AI tools and practices are embedded into the engineering workflow, with adoption measurable and growing

• The Architecture Guild is running consistently, with clear decisions documented and followed through

• At least one meaningful improvement to the platform architecture is in production or clearly underway

• You are trusted by the engineering team and working as a genuine partner to the VP of Engineering

The Truth About Working Here 

It’s messy and fast. We’re scaling quickly, priorities shift, and nothing stays still for long. We fail, we learn and we iterate. If you need perfect architecture or stable requirements, this won’t be for you.

It’s demanding. The team will look to you. The bar is high. You’ll be trusted with real influence and real accountability early, and you’ll see the impact of your work immediately.

It’s team-first. No egos, no silos, no coasting. We push each other, support each other, and expect everyone to pull their weight. We help each other win.

What You Need to Bring 

• Deep technical engineering experience. You have strong command of backend systems, distributed architecture, and modern engineering practices. You’ve built and maintained production systems at scale and can engage with hard problems from first principles.

• A coaching instinct. You genuinely enjoy making other engineers better. You have experience mentoring junior and mid-level engineers and you do it through questioning, pairing, and guiding rather than just telling them the answer.

• Hands-on delivery. You write code regularly and take pride in it. You don’t just review and advise. You roll up your sleeves and build alongside the team.

• AI fluency. You have practical experience building with LLMs, AI integrations, or AI-powered features. You understand how AI changes what good architecture looks like and you can bring a team along on that journey.

• Ownership mindset. You don’t just influence. You take accountability for outcomes. If the architecture isn’t improving, that’s on you. If the team isn’t growing, that’s on you too.

• Commercial awareness. You understand that engineering decisions have business consequences. You can think about trade-offs in terms of customer impact and commercial value, not just technical elegance.

• Strong communication. You can explain complex technical ideas clearly to engineers at all levels. You contribute to architecture conversations in a way that opens up thinking rather than closing it down.

Bonus Points 

• Experience with .NET Core, React, or Azure cloud infrastructure

• Background in B2B SaaS, MarTech, or enterprise software

• Experience with vector databases, RAG pipelines, or semantic search

• Track record of running or contributing to architecture review processes

• Experience in a scale-up environment where you’ve had to build and improve practices, not just inherit them

What We Are Not Looking For 

We want to be honest about this, because hiring the wrong person for this role would be worse than a slow hire.

• The ivory tower architect. Someone who produces strategy in isolation and expects others to execute it without being part of the journey.

• The solo performer. Someone who measures success by their own output rather than by how the team around them has grown.

• The framework collector. Someone who leads with methodology rather than judgment. We need people who can think, not people who can cite.

• The passenger. Someone waiting for the architecture to be perfect before they engage. That moment is not coming. We need someone who improves things as they go.

Missing a few requirements? Good roles stretch you. If you’re 70% there and hungry for the rest, we want to hear from you. We’re more interested in trajectory than history.

How We Work 

This is our default setting. If this isn’t for you, we’ll both be miserable:

• Our values – humble, resilient, team, authenticity and bravery – are woven into everything we do.

• We find a way – roadblocks are puzzles, not excuses.

• We own it – we roll up our sleeves and take responsibility. We own our mistakes and fix them.

• We’re ambitious – we set bold goals and back ourselves and each other to deliver them.

• We’re curious – we challenge the way things have always been done or ideas if we think of a better way.

• We give a damn – we work hard because we care deeply about our customers, colleagues, and our work.

This isn’t for everyone. And that’s intentional.

The Deal 

• Pension. A combined contribution of up to 12% of your salary.

• Bonus. A bonus scheme based on company performance.

• Referral. A referral bonus when you successfully refer someone.

• Pay. We review pay annually, with performance being a key factor.

• Holidays. 33 days including public holidays, with options to buy or sell extra days.

• Giving back. 2 paid days to support a charity of your choice.

• Wellbeing. Enhanced sick pay from day 1 and coaching and counselling through our wellbeing partners, Plumm.

• Health Days. 2 paid days to recharge when you need it.

• Connection. Flexibility to work hybrid, with quarterly company meetups and regular in-person team sessions.

We’re building an inclusive workplace that promotes and values difference, where everyone, from any background, can do their best work, be themselves and be proud to belong.

For more information about us visit: https://www.hyble.tech/ or check out our socials.