Principal Software Engineer

Ripjar specialises in the development of software and data products that help governments and organisations combat serious financial crime. Our technology is used to identify criminal activity such as money laundering and terrorist financing, and enables organisations to enforce sanctions at scale to help combat rogue entities and state actors.

Team Mission

Ripjar’s Engineering team builds software products that make the world safer. We work together, mixing creativity with technology and engineering excellence to solve problems that nobody else can.

Our customers – including global financial institutions, corporations and technology comparies – rely on our Labyrinth Screening product to monitor millions of client records, counterparties and prospects for sanctions, AML/CTF and other risks against billions of data points in near-real time.

Ripjar’s unique approach to name and adverse media screening – using AI Risk Profiles – provides our customers with world leading capability, recognised by Chartis as a Category Leader in KYC Solutions. We continue to innovate at pace the compliance sector, pioneering the responsible use of AI with our Compliance Copilot.

What you'll be doing

As a Principal Engineer, you will be the senior technologist in the Labyrinth Screening team. You’ll be the technology leader within our engineering and product teams, guiding the design and development of Labyrinth Screening and its underlying technology platform. You’ll work closely with senior leaders and colleagues across the organisation, and you’ll play a key role in collaborating with our customers and partners.

As an engineer with breadth and depth of experience you’ll be in your element designing and delivering scalable software in the cloud and on-premise, articulating software designs and tradeoffs, communicating with engineers, technology and product leaders, senior leadership and customers.

You’re a key individual contributor and natural technical leader, comfortable guiding engineering teams through uncertainty, unravelling complexity and providing a clear vision. You’ll work with our engineering managers and staff/senior engineers to empower engineers to deliver high quality software

You’ll play a lead role in the design and direction of our product functionality, and you’ll engage with key customers to understand their needs and shape them into an effective product and technology roadmap.

As a senior technologist you’ll be central to Ripjar’s technical leadership. You’ll report directly to the CTO.

Key Tasks:

• Own the overall architecture and technology roadmap for Labyrinth Screening.
• Leading contribution to product design and development.
• Empowering Staff and Senior engineers to own key elements of the product and architecture.
• Empowering technology and product leaders and teams to design and deliver high quality software products.
• Take a leading role in Ripjar’s engineering organisation: contributing to standards, design patterns and technology approaches across our technical teams.
• Ensure consistent application of architectural decisions and guidelines across Ripjar's software products.

Requirements

Key Skills

The successful candidate should have these skills:

• You have a strong all round technical ability with a demonstrable working knowledge of building, implementing and maintaining complex Cloud/Hybrid/On Premise systems.
• You have a strong Engineering background and are a natural technical leader. As a guideline, you’ll have at least 10 years’ experience building software.
• You have industry expertise in financial crime compliance, preferably in the development of high performance name screening solutions.
• You have experience designing distributed data-intensive systems.
• You can quickly comprehend complex scenarios, unravel uncertainty and ambiguity and articulate the architecture of complex systems.
• You can communicate clearly - written, verbal, and visually - in the right level of detail for any audience.
• You’ve built production systems based on OpenSearch/ElasticSearch, MongoDB and/or Apache Kafka.

Bonus Skills

• Expertise in Javascript or Python.
• Experience with multiple leading cloud technologies
• Experience with microservices architectures.
• Experience with Kubernetes.
• Experience with AI/ML systems.

Benefits

Why we think you’ll enjoy it here:

• Competitive Base Salary
• 25 days annual leave, rising to 30 days after 5 years of service
• Hybrid working option for employees
• Life assurance
• Company Share Scheme
• Private Family Healthcare
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Company contributions to your pension
• Enhanced maternity/paternity pay
• The latest tech including a top of the range MacBook Pro
• Candidates can work from our Cheltenham, Bristol or London offices
• Offices equipped with well-stocked pantries with food, snacks and drinks when in the office

Ripjar's Commitment to Diversity

“Diversity is essential in the way we operate. Having people from different backgrounds, genders and experiences ensures that we make decisions with a truly global perspective. Diversity gives us strength in our technology, analysis and relationships.” - Maria Cox, Head of People Operations