Interim Principal Engineer

Immediate start until 31 March 2026

🔧 What You’ll Be Doing

• Responsible for the continuous improvement of highly performant ed-tech applications that are secure, scalable, highly available and accessible to the widest number of users, and that meet Government Digital Service standards.

• Lead on designing and implementing new areas of the architecture.

• Design and maintain engineering principles and processes to ensure code quality across the team.

• Prioritise an excellent developer experience, ensuring all applications and architecture are well documented.

• Take an active and exemplary role in the ongoing development of the Oak platform.

• Ensure that all Oak products are accessible to as many people and on as many devices as possible.

• Provide mentorship for less experienced colleagues.

• Develop As a member of the Oak Team, you will contribute to the wider success and culture and planning of the organisation.

• Work in cross-functional and product oriented squads with colleagues from across the organisation, as required.

• Deputise for Head of Engineering and take on other general responsibilities as required.

🌱 What We’re Looking For

• Extensive professional experience leading the development of digital products and services with modern Javascript libraries and tools.

• Highly experienced in architecting secure and resilient B2C internet products and services, with the ability to facilitate technical decision-making.

• Can demonstrate creating significant value for money when architecting and managing technical solutions.

• Proven success in designing and implementing business-critical internal processes and tools that have a measurable impact on the organisation.

• Confident explaining technical concepts so they can be understood by anyone.

• A desire to build beautiful, easy-to-use and impactful digital products with an understanding of the importance of accessibility in all its forms.

• An empathetic listener, clear communicator and supportive collaborator.

The successful candidate will have a desire to contribute in all areas to ensure Oak is successful. You will be comfortable working at pace, with a range of digital systems (including proprietary ones as required) and you will continuously look at ways that the team can keep getting better. You will be excellent at working as part of a remote team, building relationships and managing your time effectively.

Next steps

Attach a letter which outlines your expression of interest in the role.

Expressions of interest close: 12 noon on 6th February 2026.

We aim to hold interviews in the latter part of week commencing 9th February.