Principal Software Engineer
Top Benefits
About the role
Who you are
- Experience designing, building, and operating high scale distributed systems
- Background in API design, platforms, or frameworks
- Strong product and customer mindset, with a track record of moving fast, iterating, and delivering meaningful impact
- Ability to make technical decisions with considerations for long-term impact
- Success in collaborating across teams and building solid technical strategy
- Sound judgment in balancing technical debt, innovation, and business priorities
- Effective communication skills with various audiences including executives, customers, and engineers
- Demonstrated ability to mentor & elevate senior+ engineers, and shape the influence of technical leaders across the org
- Familiarity with GraphQL, Federation architecture or API gateway technologies
- Understanding of software development lifecycle models and their application to source-available products
What the job involves
- As a Principal Engineer at Apollo, you'll be a technical leader who helps shape our engineering culture, directly advising senior & exec leadership across products and systems that power GraphOS
- Your work will influence company-wide priorities, delivering technical innovations that translate directly into customer value and business impact
- In this role, you’ll partner directly with Product and Engineering leadership to develop strategy, design solutions, and elevate our engineering teams through meaningful impact and results
- Create solutions that deliver direct impact for customers and drive business growth
- Contribute to company-level objectives related to GraphOS adoption and success
- Balance current technical requirements with long-term architectural vision
- Use data to evaluate effectiveness and drive continuous improvement
- Propose ideas that create business value through technical insight and vision in the GraphQL ecosystem
- Develop resilient, scalable systems and optimize existing components of GraphOS, including the Core Router and Apollo Federation
- Lead and participate in technical forums to elevate design and architecture practices across Apollo
- Apply your expertise of GraphQL or distributed systems architecture to solve complex, high-impact problems
- Create high-quality technical documents that exemplify excellence for the engineering organization
- Guide strategic architectural decisions that enable innovative, adaptable solutions to meet a broad range of customer needs
- Identify areas of opportunity for the engineering and product organizations along with catalyzing the initial effort
- Ensure operational excellence and resilience across GraphOS systems in support of company-wide goals
- Develop technical plans and documentation that enable teams to deliver on Apollo's roadmap
- Combine high-level technical planning with hands-on problem-solving
- Collaborate with engineering management to build GraphOS components that are maintainable, performant, and secure
- Transform complex concepts into achievable deliverables that address customer needs
- Balance customer needs with community interests in open source projects
- Participate in an on-call rotation as necessary
- Serve as a key technical partner to stakeholders, including product and customer success, aligning engineering efforts with user and business priorities
- Drive alignment across functions by clearly communicating technical context, tradeoffs, and priorities
- Represent Apollo through various channels, including customer conversations and community engagement
- Engage with thought leaders in the GraphQL and API platform ecosystem
- Support the growth of the team by helping to identify, interview, and recruit top engineering talent
Benefits
- Flexible working hours
- Generous time off
- Parental leave
- Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, and Disability insurance
- 401(k)
- Work from home opportunities
- Virtual “coffee chats” and team lunches, and an AV setup specifically tailored for remote experience
- Everyone-in-town weeks, where we fly all of our Apollo employees to San Francisco for an action packed week of work and play
About Apollo
Apollo was launched in 2009 to provide clients and brokers with an agile and entrepreneurial insurance partner. The Apollo name recognised the success of one of its founding investors, Neil Armstrong, who in 1969 was the first person to walk on the moon.
We are an innovative, integrated insurance group offering insurance products across property, casualty, marine, energy and transportation, specialty, reinsurance, and Smart Follow teams via Syndicate 1969. Through Syndicate 1971, ibott, we offer digital and embedded risk programmes, whilst our Strategic Partner Syndicates business supports new Lloyd’s entrants from initial concept to full managing agency services.
What makes us different? Our wide range of products put us in a unique position where our entrepreneurial approach and service excellence delivers creative and flexible solutions for our clients and partners all in one place as we continue our exciting growth journey. Apollo is a great place to work with an inclusive culture where everyone is welcome, included, and can thrive. Our workplace is collaborative, supportive and innovative, and we strive to produce the best results possible, together. Opportunities exist to develop our employees’ key strengths and we are supported in ways that matter to each individual. In addition to generous employee benefits, flexible working is fully embraced and utilised. We understand that no one colleague is the same and that each of us has our own responsibilities and roles outside of our working life.
“We attract and retain the highest quality talent by developing a team atmosphere where opportunity exists for our employees and partners.” David Ibeson, Group CEO
Principal Software Engineer
Top Benefits
About the role
Who you are
- Experience designing, building, and operating high scale distributed systems
- Background in API design, platforms, or frameworks
- Strong product and customer mindset, with a track record of moving fast, iterating, and delivering meaningful impact
- Ability to make technical decisions with considerations for long-term impact
- Success in collaborating across teams and building solid technical strategy
- Sound judgment in balancing technical debt, innovation, and business priorities
- Effective communication skills with various audiences including executives, customers, and engineers
- Demonstrated ability to mentor & elevate senior+ engineers, and shape the influence of technical leaders across the org
- Familiarity with GraphQL, Federation architecture or API gateway technologies
- Understanding of software development lifecycle models and their application to source-available products
What the job involves
- As a Principal Engineer at Apollo, you'll be a technical leader who helps shape our engineering culture, directly advising senior & exec leadership across products and systems that power GraphOS
- Your work will influence company-wide priorities, delivering technical innovations that translate directly into customer value and business impact
- In this role, you’ll partner directly with Product and Engineering leadership to develop strategy, design solutions, and elevate our engineering teams through meaningful impact and results
- Create solutions that deliver direct impact for customers and drive business growth
- Contribute to company-level objectives related to GraphOS adoption and success
- Balance current technical requirements with long-term architectural vision
- Use data to evaluate effectiveness and drive continuous improvement
- Propose ideas that create business value through technical insight and vision in the GraphQL ecosystem
- Develop resilient, scalable systems and optimize existing components of GraphOS, including the Core Router and Apollo Federation
- Lead and participate in technical forums to elevate design and architecture practices across Apollo
- Apply your expertise of GraphQL or distributed systems architecture to solve complex, high-impact problems
- Create high-quality technical documents that exemplify excellence for the engineering organization
- Guide strategic architectural decisions that enable innovative, adaptable solutions to meet a broad range of customer needs
- Identify areas of opportunity for the engineering and product organizations along with catalyzing the initial effort
- Ensure operational excellence and resilience across GraphOS systems in support of company-wide goals
- Develop technical plans and documentation that enable teams to deliver on Apollo's roadmap
- Combine high-level technical planning with hands-on problem-solving
- Collaborate with engineering management to build GraphOS components that are maintainable, performant, and secure
- Transform complex concepts into achievable deliverables that address customer needs
- Balance customer needs with community interests in open source projects
- Participate in an on-call rotation as necessary
- Serve as a key technical partner to stakeholders, including product and customer success, aligning engineering efforts with user and business priorities
- Drive alignment across functions by clearly communicating technical context, tradeoffs, and priorities
- Represent Apollo through various channels, including customer conversations and community engagement
- Engage with thought leaders in the GraphQL and API platform ecosystem
- Support the growth of the team by helping to identify, interview, and recruit top engineering talent
Benefits
- Flexible working hours
- Generous time off
- Parental leave
- Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, and Disability insurance
- 401(k)
- Work from home opportunities
- Virtual “coffee chats” and team lunches, and an AV setup specifically tailored for remote experience
- Everyone-in-town weeks, where we fly all of our Apollo employees to San Francisco for an action packed week of work and play
About Apollo
Apollo was launched in 2009 to provide clients and brokers with an agile and entrepreneurial insurance partner. The Apollo name recognised the success of one of its founding investors, Neil Armstrong, who in 1969 was the first person to walk on the moon.
We are an innovative, integrated insurance group offering insurance products across property, casualty, marine, energy and transportation, specialty, reinsurance, and Smart Follow teams via Syndicate 1969. Through Syndicate 1971, ibott, we offer digital and embedded risk programmes, whilst our Strategic Partner Syndicates business supports new Lloyd’s entrants from initial concept to full managing agency services.
What makes us different? Our wide range of products put us in a unique position where our entrepreneurial approach and service excellence delivers creative and flexible solutions for our clients and partners all in one place as we continue our exciting growth journey. Apollo is a great place to work with an inclusive culture where everyone is welcome, included, and can thrive. Our workplace is collaborative, supportive and innovative, and we strive to produce the best results possible, together. Opportunities exist to develop our employees’ key strengths and we are supported in ways that matter to each individual. In addition to generous employee benefits, flexible working is fully embraced and utilised. We understand that no one colleague is the same and that each of us has our own responsibilities and roles outside of our working life.
“We attract and retain the highest quality talent by developing a team atmosphere where opportunity exists for our employees and partners.” David Ibeson, Group CEO