Principal Engineer

An Introduction to Primer

The 21st century has witnessed remarkable expansion within the payments ecosystem with the introduction of new payment services, growth in cross-border commerce, and the development of multi-payment processor payment strategies.

The bottom line is that payment is no longer just another step in the purchasing funnel but a strategic asset that can drive business growth and innovation.

Enter Primer - the world's first unified payment infrastructure, empowering businesses worldwide to unleash their payment potential. By choosing our platform, merchants can take control over their payment stack, create unique commerce experiences, accelerate their roadmap and increase payment success.

Primer's enterprise-grade infrastructure, frameworks, and tooling allow merchants to unify their disparate payment solutions and services to build optimised payment flows tailored to their unique business needs with no code or additional complexity. We strive to make something complex incredibly simple and intuitive.

Our success so far has been reflected in the trust placed in us by category leaders such as Printify, NewLook, Voi, and Dabble, who are using Primer to transform their payments into a growth lever. Moreover, the world's top investors, including Accel, Balderton, Iconiq, and Tencent, have also invested in Primer's vision to rebuild payments and commerce from the ground up.

Join us in shaping the future of payments and commerce. Let's pave the way for a world where businesses can fully realise their payment potential.

What will you be doing in this role?

• You will play a critical role in shaping the technical direction of our engineering department at Primer

• Reporting directly to our CTO, you will help ensure that our technical strategy aligns with our business goals as we continue to scale effectively

• Act as a technical authority and mentor for our Staff Engineers and Engineering Leadership

• Advocate for technical excellence, scalability, reliability, and balancing innovation with pragmatism

• Provide hands-on contributions through system design, coding, technical decision-making and picking the right tools for the job

• Foster a strong engineering culture based on continuous learning and development in a collaborative, low-ego environment

• Collaborate closely with business stakeholders, acting as a domain expert and technical authority to drive cross-functional initiatives

• Shape and implement best practices for engineering, ensuring industry-leading standards

What are we looking for?

• Ideally a Principal Engineer (or similar) who has successfully navigated the transition from startup to scale-up

• The ability to shape and implement technical strategy at an organisational level

• A proven track record of leading and mentoring engineers at Staff+ level, fostering both their technical and professional growth

• Experience working in high-scale, low-latency environments, with a deep understanding of backend and infrastructure challenges

• Hands-on expertise in coding, with the ability to dive into technical work when needed

• A background in a strong engineering culture, where high standards for technical quality and operational excellence are the norm

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to work closely with non-engineering stakeholders to drive company-wide initiatives

Our engineering teams work fully remotely across Europe and operate within local timezones

Unfortunately we are unable to offer VISA sponsorships or relocation packages at this time

What’s the culture like at Primer?

We’re building a culture where people can come and do their best work and enjoy it. We want our people to be proud of the impact that they have at Primer, and of the work that they are doing. You will be working with a team of people who are mission-driven, smart, and reflective, and who are invested in building exceptional products and delivering success for our merchants (and we also know how to have fun along the way).

We work remotely. We believe that building a successful, profitable company goes beyond proximity. We invest in our relationships with each other through great remote working practices and thoughtfully designed face-to-face time together. Our heads-together time comes in the form of workstations, our annual company retreat, and co-working space access worldwide.

Finally, let’s go ahead and say it. The work that we do is challenging. Startups are a challenge, building category defining products is a challenge. You should be prepared for a challenge at Primer. But, there’s a big difference between a challenge and a struggle. The key difference is that the right challenge comes with the right support structures, an acceptance that not everything always goes to plan, a collaborative environment, and a great team around you. It’s never a challenge that you will face alone.

Our benefits:

• We are fully remote

• Competitive share options

• Uncapped holiday, with 25 days minimum to be taken

• Co-working space access

• Workations & company retreat

• The best equipment for your role

• £500 towards your home office setup

• Generous learning budget

• Medical insurance

• A broad set of additional perks and benefits (depending on location)

Don’t meet every single requirement?

At Primer, we’re dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply. You may be the right candidate for this or other roles. Primer is committed to the equal treatment of all current and prospective employees, regardless of background or beliefs—see our diversity commitment statement for more details

Equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging policy

Primer adopts a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination.

We are committed to providing equal opportunities to all current and prospective employees regardless of age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, or marriage and civil partnership.