{"id":4068724,"url":"https://alion.io/job/the-very-group-principal-software-engineer-digital-customer-experience","title":"Principal Software Engineer - Digital Customer Experience","company":{"id":5371,"name":"The Very Group","domain":"very.co.uk","url":"https://alion.io/company/the-very-group","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workable","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":3,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":33,"computed_at":"2026-11-12T10:38:37Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Liverpool, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Nest.JS","optional":false},{"name":"Node JS","optional":false},{"name":"React.js","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-11T12:36:35Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-11","last_verified_at":"2026-11-14T04:48:20Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"About us\nWe’re the team behind digital retailer Very.\nOur purpose, helping families get more out of life, powers everything we do.\nAnd we want our people to get more out of life too! If you’re high-performing, ambitious and make the most of every opportunity, we want to hear from you. In return, you’ll enjoy heaps of flexibility, great perks and benefits, and the freedom to be yourself, keep learning and take your career wherever you want it to go.\nIf you love making a difference, you’ll love making it sparkle for millions of Very customers.\nAbout the team\nYou'll join our Digital Customer Experience (DCX) technology team, a group focused on creating seamless, engaging and high-performing digital experiences for millions of Very customers.\nDCX sits at the heart of the customer journey, owning the technology that powers how customers discover products, browse our site, engage with content and ultimately make purchases. The team plays a critical role in delivering experiences that directly impact customer satisfaction, conversion and commercial performance.\nWorking across Product, Engineering, Architecture and UX, the team combines deep technical expertise with a strong customer-first mindset. We continually invest in modern engineering practices, cloud-native technologies and emerging capabilities such as AI to ensure we're building experiences that delight customers while enabling the business to move at pace.\nAs a Principal Software Engineer, you'll help shape the technical direction of our front-end and digital platforms, influence engineering standards across the organisation and support teams in solving complex technical challenges at scale.\nYou'll be joining a collaborative engineering community that values ownership, continuous improvement and the freedom to innovate, whilst maintaining the high standards expected of a modern technology organisation. This is an opportunity to work on technology that directly influences the experience of millions of customers and helps drive the future growth of Very.\nAbout the role\nWe're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to provide technical leadership across our engineering community whilst remaining hands-on with design, architecture and delivery.\nThis is an opportunity to influence technology decisions that impact millions of customers, helping us build the next generation of digital experiences using modern technologies including TypeScript, React, Node.js and AWS.\nAs one of our most senior individual contributors, you'll partner with engineers, architects and product teams to solve complex technical challenges, drive engineering excellence and shape the future direction of our platforms.\nProviding technical leadership across squads and domains, helping teams deliver high-quality software at scale. \nDesigning and building modern, cloud-native solutions using TypeScript, React, Node.js and AWS. \nShaping engineering standards, architectural patterns and best practices across the wider technology organisation. \nBalancing immediate business priorities with longer-term technical strategy and platform evolution. \nDriving improvements in software quality, performance, security, observability and resilience. \nIdentifying opportunities to simplify systems, reduce technical debt and improve developer experience. \nChampioning CI/CD, automation and modern engineering practices that enable teams to deliver quickly and safely. \nCollaborating with Architects, Product Managers, Delivery Leads and Engineers to deliver customer value. \nMentoring and coaching engineers at all levels, helping to grow technical capability across the organisation. \nSupporting the adoption of emerging technologies, including AI-assisted engineering, where they create meaningful value. \nActing as a technical ambassador for Very, sharing knowledge internally and helping strengthen our engineering brand externally. \nAbout you\nYou'll be a highly experienced software engineer who combines deep technical expertise with a passion for helping others succeed.\nYou'll enjoy solving complex problems, influencing technical strategy and creating an environment where engineering teams can thrive.\nSignificant experience designing, building and evolving large-scale distributed systems. \nStrong hands-on expertise with TypeScript, React, Node.js/NestJS and AWS. \nA track record of defining technical direction and influencing engineering decisions across multiple teams. \nExperience building secure, resilient and highly available applications in cloud environments. \nStrong knowledge of modern software architecture, engineering patterns and development practices. \nExperience driving improvements in CI/CD, automation, testing and operational excellence. \nA passion for engineering quality, simplicity and continuous improvement. \nProven experience coaching and mentoring engineers, technical leads and senior developers. \nExcellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex technical concepts. \nCuriosity about new technologies and a desire to continually improve how software is built and delivered. \nA customer-centric mindset, with an appreciation of how engineering decisions influence customer experience, engagement and commercial outcomes. \nSome of our benefits\nFlexible, hybrid working model \nInclusive culture and environment, check out our Glassdoor reviews \n£1000 flexible benefits allowance to suit your needs \n30 days holiday + bank holidays \nLinkedIn Learning access \nBonus potential (performance and business-related) \nUp to 25% discount on Very.co.uk \nMatched pension up to 6% \nMore benefits can be found on our career site \nHow to apply\nPlease note that the talent acquisition team are managing this vacancy directly, and if successful in securing this role, you will be required to undertake a credit, CIFAS, Right to Work checks and if a specific requirement of your role a DBS (criminal records) check. Should your application progress we require you to let the team know if there is anything you need to disclose in relation to any of these checks prior to them being undertaken, including any unspent criminal convictions.\nWhat happens next?\nOur talent acquisition team will be in touch if you’re successful so keep an eye on your emails! We’ll arrange a short call to learn more about you, as well as answer any questions you have. If it feels like we’re a good match, we’ll share your CV with the hiring manager to review. Our interview process is tailored to each role and can be in-person or held remotely.\nYou can expect a two stage interview process for this position:\n1st stage - A one hour technical interview - this will likely involve a technical exercise with the team.\n2nd stage - a one hour behavioural interview\nAs an inclusive employer please do let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments.\nIf you'd like to know more about our interviews, you can find out here.\nDiversity, inclusion and equal opportunities\nWe’re building a culture of everyday inclusion, and welcome applications from anyone who believes they can do the job. We don’t discriminate based on age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.\nWe want our recruitment process to be accessible to everyone. If you need reasonable adjustments to apply, interview, or perform a role, let us know via . We’ll be happy to support you.\nWe’re proud to be a Disability Confident Committed Employer and have nine brilliant colleague networks - including DAWN (Disability Awareness at Very) and Think (Neurodiversity at Very) - that are helping us make Very an even more inclusive place to work.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7746,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["E-commerce Platforms","Buy Now, Pay Later"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-11T12:36:35Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":33,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-12T10:38:37Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/the-very-group-principal-software-engineer-digital-customer-experience","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/the-very-group-principal-software-engineer-digital-customer-experience.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-14T05:35:40Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":9405,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-15T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":5371},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=5371"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fthe-very-group-principal-software-engineer-digital-customer-experience"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"free","price":{"credits":0,"usd":0},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fthe-very-group-principal-software-engineer-digital-customer-experience"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fthe-very-group-principal-software-engineer-digital-customer-experience"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/the-very-group-principal-software-engineer-digital-customer-experience\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fthe-very-group-principal-software-engineer-digital-customer-experience"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4068724}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"very.co.uk","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4068724},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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