Principal Software Engineer - UK or Europe

We are honu.ai, a VC-backed startup building the rails for autonomous businesses and organisations. Our core offering, dubbed Decision Infrastructure, is an additive 'cognitive' layer to the enterprise stack that augments humans and AI agents with superhuman decision making capabilities. We have been featured in a couple of articles this year: here: AI economy, Autonomous Companies. Currently in closed alpha and working with our first pilot clients. Read more about us and our approach on our website.

Honu is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join our small agile team and take a leadership role in delivering our cutting edge platform. We are looking for a top technologist with extensive experience in Python (7+ years professionally) who is a systems thinker, with a strong foundation in software engineering and software design.

As a Principal Engineer, you will work closely with our CTO, and will take the lead in design and development of our cutting-edge platform for AI-centric products.

The Role

• Have a hugely visible impact, building towards our first public release and beyond, as a member of a small, tight-knit team, including working closely with the founder
• Architect and develop scalable solutions, that are reliable, secure and extensible.
• Lead and mentor the engineering team. Improve engineering standards, tooling, and processes
• Drive innovation and strategic technical decisions
• Advise leadership and the product on key technical considerations related to the rapid developments in tech
• Ensure high-quality code and best practices. Write clean, maintainable and efficient code and ensure code quality through TDD and observability practices
• Develop RESTful APIs using FastAPI and Pydantic
• Work with SQL and NoSQL databases, as well as ORM tools like SQLAlchemy and SQLModel
• Containerise applications using Docker
• Participate in Agile XP methodologies like pair programming and code reviews
• Deploy applications to Google Cloud Platform using Terraform
• Monitoring and supporting production, staging, research, and demo environments

Ideal Profile

• You possess extensive technical proficiency in Python (7+ years professionally) and are comfortable with a range of libraries and, ideally, cloud-based architecture (AWS/GCP/Azure etc. we use Terraform to deploy to GCP)
• Many years of experience in building complex software solutions, better if in a product company, while armed with a healthy dose of practical skepticism and pragmatism
• Believer in easy-to-maintain code and identify with modern concepts such as clean coding, automated testing and continuous deployment
• Driven and passionate about building innovative technologies, and able to rally the team around them
• Strong systems thinker, able to see the bigger picture at different resolutions simultaneously
• You know start-up life, ideally within a PaaS business
• You’ve shipped high-quality products from start to finish and are equally as comfortable building from scratch as you are improving an existing product
• Strong background in system architecture and design
• Excellent problem-solving and communication skills
• You’re considerate, humble, and a strong believer in teamwork
• You're comfortable taking ownership, accountability and responsibility
• Familiarity with machine learning frameworks and cloud technologies.
• Based in the UK or Europe
• You're available to meet in the UK or Europe for a 4-day team working session every 8-10 weeks

Nice to haves

• Airflow, Airbyte, Python, DBT, Postgres, and BigQuery on GCP.
• Knowledge of OAuth/API user credential handling and feed acquisition from sources such as Shopify, QuickBooks, Google Analytics, Facebook, Salesforce, and many others
• Experience with 3rd-party API integrations
• DevOps experience ( incl. Terraform )

Our Process

• Technical screening with our head of engineering (30 mins)
• Second call with our founder (30 mins)
• Pair programming Technical Assessment (1hr)
• System Design Technical Assessment (1hr)
• Final chat with team members (1.5-2 hours)

We are a young business with a huge amount of evolution to come. Alongside a salary, we are able to offer:

• Competitive stock options package
• Remote-first working policy
• Regular company offsites

We are growing fast and will be sure to respect your time and expectations each step of the way. We embrace diversity in all forms and are dedicated to building an inclusive, equitable environment for all people to do their best work with us.

We’re an equal-opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, veteran, neurodiversity status or disability status. If there are any suitable adjustments that can be made to ensure a smooth interview process, please do let us know.