Hi 👋 we’re Glean. We make study software that improves your confidence and ability to learn.

• We’re a SaaS scale up and one of the fastest growing tech companies in the North.
• There’s 100+ of us around the UK with our HQ in Leeds.
• Our software is award-winning and used by 100,000s of students at over 800 universities & colleges worldwide.
• We’re growing so we can achieve our mission to support 1 million students to become better learners by 2026.

Meet the team:

You’ll be managed by Mala, Head of Engineering. If you want to know more about joining Glean, you can hear from Mala here. You’ll work closely with the whole Engineering team (you can learn more about our Engineering leadership team here) but to give you an idea of who you may meet during the recruitment process :

Matt R (the other Principal Engineer, enjoys Starcraft and windsurfing),

Luke (Tech Lead, board and video gamer, forest wanderer),

Ambrose (Tech Lead, basketball player, serial DIYer),

Blake (Senior Engineer, tennis player, drummer),

Matt K (Tech Lead, enjoys QMK keyboard tinkering and hiking),

Mark (Platform Lead, Nomad policy champion, Glean Pride organiser).

The role of Principal Engineer:

Glean are looking for a talented, passionate Principal Engineer who wants to be part of a small, beautifully formed, and growing engineering team. We are focused on pragmatic delivery, with quality at the forefront of everything that we do. We use a mixture of front-end (TypeScript, React), back-end (JVM / Kotlin), and mobile (Flutter) technologies with an automated build pipeline (Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm). We are trusted by the business to own our technology stack and processes, and we repay this trust by delivering consistently. We aspire to be the best engineering team we can be, by constantly asking, "given what we know now, is there anything we should change?".

What you’ll be doing:

Engineering at Glean collaborates with all these functions:, Product, User Experience and Data. This filters down to our product squads where we have at least one team member from each discipline working together to build the best product for our users and customers. You’ll be supporting across 4 stream-aligned squads; BEAR (Buyers, Evaluators, Admins & Resellers), Note-taking (known internally as GOAT), Higher Education Solutions (known internally as Loch HESS) or Learning (known internally as EGG). As a Principal Engineer your role involves collaborating and supporting across our squads to build, implement and support software that brings value to our users and customers while aligning to our Engineering Principles.

At Glean, we take pride in our engineering approach:

• We actively manage technical debt and evolve our platform, reserving time to keep our stack modern and our delivery pace sustainable.
• Ephemeral test environments are automatically provisioned for every branch, enabling testing before changes are merged to main.
• Our automated testing strategy finds a sweet spot where our tests are meaningful and give us confidence that we'd detect regressions but minimises flakiness.
• Production is very reliable, and as a result we spend less time firefighting and more time building. We've not needed to introduce on-call support.
• We invest in engineering effectiveness - for example, by building scripts that streamline toolchain setup, maintain local environments, and help diagnose issues quickly.
• We prioritise code quality and simplicity, favouring clear, maintainable solutions over cleverness - making it easier to review, extend, and debug our systems.
• Changes are continuously deployed to production as soon as they are merged to main, we actively monitor these metrics and address any bottlenecks.
• Our squads have a high degree of autonomy and engineers own and drive change.

Your responsibilities include:

• Contribute to the overall technical strategy and roadmap for Glean Engineering, aligning technology choices with business goals.
• Define and drive the architectural vision for Glean’s systems and platforms, ensuring scalability, performance, and maintainability.
• Research, evaluate, and recommend new technologies and tools to improve existing systems or drive innovation.
• Lead and oversee complex projects, often involving multiple cross-functional squads and significant technical challenges.
• Identify and champion innovative solutions that have a significant impact on Glean’s products.
• Influence technical decisions and direction at a high level, ensuring alignment with broader strategic goals.
• Mentor and develop other engineers, helping them to grow their technical skills and leadership abilities.
• Represent Glean at conferences, meetups, or other industry events, sharing knowledge and building relationships.
• Contribute to the technical community through publications, presentations, or open-source contributions.

About you:

• Have a proven track record of delivering software, both as an individual contributor and technical lead (experience as a Principal Engineer or equivalent would be an advantage).
• Are very comfortable with frontend development (experience with React and TypeScript is a plus).
• Have experience building backend services and working with relational databases (familiarity with the JVM, especially Kotlin, is a bonus).
• Have some mobile development experience (Flutter would be ideal).
• Promote best practices in automated testing, continuous integration, automated deployment, and code quality.
• Actively mentor others, fostering trust, and contributing to a positive team culture.
• Champion continuous learning, developing new skills, and leading by example to advocate for a flexible, team-oriented mindset.
• Have strong opinions with "passionate views, loosely held" – articulate ideas clearly but remain open to other perspectives.
• Are able to analyse complex technical problems, breaking them down, identifying patterns, and using critical thinking to craft and evaluate solutions with clear trade-offs and collaborative insight.

Not every one of the above is essential, but hopefully it gives an idea of what we find useful day to day.

💰Salary and benefits:

£80,000- £90,000 dependent upon experience

🏖️ 33 days annual leave (Inclusive of bank holidays)

🎄 3 gifted days off at Christmas

💰 EMI Share Options Scheme

🎓 Generous individual learning and training allowance

⌚ Truly flexible hours to suit when you work best

💻 Full home working set up and beautiful collaborative office space

🌴 Nomad working policy with family travel insurance

🍼 Enhanced 26 weeks maternity and 4 weeks paternity (fully paid)

🤍 Health cash plan (from glasses to massages)

💸 6% employer pension contribution

🚗 Free city centre parking in Leeds

Location:

We have a beautiful office space in Leeds and we love it when we get together to collaborate in person. We typically operate a hybrid way of working, however some of our roles support remote working within the UK, if you live more than 50 miles from the office.

We will discuss ways of working with you at interview however if you have any questions before you apply please reach out to [email protected]

💡 What to expect next:

We’ll review your application and provide a response within 1 week. Even if it’s not the news you’d hoped for, we appreciate it’s good to know either way.

If we invite you to meet with us for interview, here’s an overview of what the process will look like:

1. Recruitment Screening Call with Courtney (30 minutes)
2. Take-home Technical task (<1 hour 30 minutes)
3. Technical Interview exploring your technical task with Matt and another dev from the team (1 hour 45 minutes)
4. Architecture Interview with Matt and Mala (1 hour)
5. Culture and Values Interview with Mala and Josh the CTO (1 hour)

Ahead of your interviews you will receive a confirmation email outlining who you’ll be meeting and when, anything you’ll need to prepare in advance and any resources we think you might find helpful.

👀 Interested in learning more about a career at Glean?

Here are a few further resources:

About Glean

Glean Tech Blog

Working at Glean Blog

The Glean Study Tool

💌 Not quite the right role for you however you’d love to be a part of Glean’s journey?

Let’s connect! Reach out to [email protected] and we’ll add you to our network, to keep you updated with any future opportunities we think you might be interested in.

📄 Applicant Privacy Notice

We think it’s important that you understand how we use and handle your personal information, so here’s a link to our privacy notice. By submitting your application, you’re confirming that you’ve read and understood this notice.