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Principal Engineer (Director), Quality & Reliability, United Kingdom

Client: Tide

Location:

Job Category: Other

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EU work permit required: Yes

Job Reference: 2a4b05cbd0f4

Job Views: 54

Posted: 12.08.2025

Expiry Date: 26.09.2025

Job Description:

About Tide

At Tide, we are building a finance & admin platform designed to save small businesses time and money. We provide our members with business accounts and related banking services, along with a comprehensive set of connected administrative solutions from invoicing to accounting.

Launched in 2017, Tide is now the leading business financial platform in the UK with 575,000 SME members (10% market share) and more than 250,000 SMEs in India. Headquartered in London, Tide has over 1,800 Tideans across the UK, Bulgaria, India, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, and Germany.

Tide is rapidly growing, expanding into new markets, and always looking for passionate and driven people. Join us in our mission to empower small businesses and help them save time and money.

About the role

As the Principal Engineer (Director) - Quality & Reliability, you will be a hands-on leader overseeing several key engineering teams, including Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Quality, Client Platform, and Engineering Productivity. Your primary goal will be to develop and implement strategies that enhance system reliability, streamline engineering processes, and ensure the highest quality of our software products.

This role is designed for a "player-coach" who combines strong technical skills with leadership capabilities. You will be expected to engage deeply with technical challenges, contribute directly to code and architectural decisions, while guiding your teams toward strategic goals.

Key Responsibilities:

• Strategic Vision and Leadership: Develop a strategic vision for quality, reliability, and productivity across Tide. Set clear, measurable goals for each team and drive initiatives that align with our business objectives.
• Hands-On Technical Leadership: Engage directly in technical discussions and decisions, contributing to the design and architecture of complex systems. Lead by example through active participation in code reviews, debugging sessions, and development of critical software components.
• Quality Assurance and Testing Strategy: Lead the QA team in creating robust automated testing frameworks and integrating these into our CI/CD pipelines. Promote a proactive quality mindset, ensuring that all software releases are rigorously tested and meet the highest standards.
• Site Reliability Engineering: Guide the SRE team in developing and maintaining scalable, highly available, and secure systems. Implement effective monitoring, logging, and alerting mechanisms to ensure rapid detection and resolution of issues, minimizing downtime, and improving system reliability.
• Client Platform Enablement: Oversee the Client Platform team in building and optimizing tools, frameworks, and libraries that accelerate the work of web and mobile client engineers. Ensure these internal tools are user-friendly, well-documented, and enhance developer experience and productivity.
• Engineering Productivity Improvements: Lead initiatives to enhance engineering productivity, such as improving development workflows, optimizing build and deployment processes, and automating repetitive tasks. Collaborate closely with teams to identify bottlenecks and implement solutions that improve overall efficiency.
• Data-Driven Optimization: Use data and analytics to assess engineering performance and identify areas for improvement. Implement metrics and KPIs to drive continuous improvement in quality, reliability, and productivity.
• Mentoring and Development: Act as a mentor and coach to engineering managers and team members, fostering a culture of continuous learning and development. Promote collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams to build a high-performing engineering organization.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate closely with Product, Infosec, Cloud, and other cross-functional teams to ensure alignment on priorities and strategies. Foster an environment of open communication and teamwork to achieve shared goals.
• Incident Response and Management: Support the response to major incidents, coordinate efforts across teams to resolve issues quickly, conduct thorough root cause analyses, and implement preventive measures to avoid recurrence.

What we are looking for

• Extensive experience in a senior technical leadership role with a strong foundation in software engineering, systems engineering, or related fields.
• Proven track record of leading SRE, QA, or engineering productivity teams, ideally in a fintech or similarly demanding environment.
• Strong technical proficiency in programming languages (e.g., Python, Java, C++, etc.) and hands-on experience in software development, debugging, and optimization.
• In-depth understanding of cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes), and modern platform engineering practices.
• Demonstrated success in driving quality, reliability, and productivity improvements in complex engineering environments.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with experience leveraging data for strategic decisions.
• Exceptional leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with a proven ability to build and lead high-performing teams.
• A proactive, hands-on approach with a focus on innovation and continuous improvement.

What you’ll get in return:

• Share options
• Flexible working options
• 25 days holiday with options for 5 extra unpaid days per year
• 3 days paid volunteering or L&D time off annually
• Personal L&D budget of £1,000 per year
• Group Life Insurance, Vitality Health, and Dental Insurance
• Spacious office near Old Street station, London, with snacks bar
• Enhanced family leave
• Access to mental wellbeing platform with therapy sessions
• Work from home budget
• Team socials and events
• Sabbatical leave

Tidean Ways of Working

We support a flexible workplace model combining remote and in-person work. Our offices serve as hubs for collaboration and community building, with regular face-to-face interactions encouraged.

Our Commitment to Diversity

At Tide, we celebrate diversity and inclusivity, believing that varied backgrounds and perspectives drive innovation and success. We are committed to creating a welcoming environment for everyone, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, or other characteristics. We foster transparency and inclusion, where everyone's voice is valued.