Principal Network and Security Engineer

Salary: £44,000 - 84,000 per year

Requirements

• We want a very senior engineer or technical leader with deep expertise in network and security engineering across hybrid or cloud-first environments.
• We want strong proficiency in Infrastructure as Code, automation, and modern engineering practices.
• We want someone who is comfortable setting standards, challenging designs, and holding quality lines.
• We want someone who thrives working with highly skilled engineers in a principal-level community.
• We want someone who cares deeply about reliability, security, and doing engineering properly.

Responsibilities

• We act as the organisations technical authority for network and security engineering.
• We define, own, and enforce network and security standards, architectures, and patterns.
• We embed security-by-design and IaC-driven delivery across our infrastructure and database platforms.
• We provide peer review, assurance, and technical sign-off for complex or high-risk initiatives.
• We drive continuous improvement in resilience, reliability, automation, and recovery.
• We govern the build, release, and decommissioning of network and security services.
• We partner with other Principal Engineers to shape a coherent, end-to-end engineering strategy.

Technologies

• Cloud
• Network
• Security
• Apex
• Support
• Linux

More

We are Places for People, the UKs leading Social Enterprise, dedicated to creating inclusive and thriving communities for our customers and employees. We are hiring a Principal Network and Security Engineer to join our Infrastructure Engineering function in a senior technical authority role at a pivotal point in our technology journey. You will work alongside a highly capable Principal Engineering community and help complete our authority layer across infrastructure engineering. We offer a comprehensive benefits package including a competitive salary with yearly review, matched pension contributions up to 7%, 35 days annual leave with the option to buy or sell leave, healthcare cashback, a bonus scheme, training and development, and extra discounts and offers. We are based in Preston for the face-to-face interview stage, and we cover reasonable travel costs for long-distance travel. We are committed to diversity, inclusion, safeguarding, accessibility, and flexible working options, including reduced hours, flexible start and finish times, or compressed hours.

last updated 28 week of 2026