We're looking for a Tech Principal to lead technical strategy and execution on our most ambitious product work: lighthouse projects inside Thoughtworks' global Customer Experience, Product and Design team. Within a few weeks, there's something real that customers can actually use and react to. If you have built a career integrating strategy, architecture, AI engineering, and executive collaboration, this role offers an ideal platform to leverage those skills.

Desirability, viability and feasibility tested with real users. You're one of the FDEs — the lead engineer on the pod — guiding architecture, delivery cadence, and technical commercial choices, while collaborating with the strategist and designer as equal partners rather than a downstream requirements queue. On larger programmes you'll lead across multiple pods, each running its own 3/3/3 rhythm — sometimes a mix of Product Innovation, Modernization/Engineering and Data & AI pod types depending on the engagement shape.

Lighthouse projects come in all sizes.

Within

Thoughtworks' Radar and CXPD's delivery standards, you make the calls: architecture patterns, stack selection, pod composition for your engagements, commercial pricing tolerances within the band, and the technical position in a pitch. This role anchors in Riyadh, working across the Kingdom's most ambitious digital bets — Vision 2030-aligned government transformation, PIF-family portfolio companies, financial services, energy, retail and public sector. Expect regulated-industry delivery, data-residency requirements under PDPL, and a client base where Arabic-language proficiency is an asset, though not a strict requirement.

Supporting the pod construct and 3/3/3 commercial arc with client leaders with a clear understanding of pricing parameters. Owning technical scope in proposals, presenting confidently, and maintaining focus when discovery reveals core project requirements. Pairing with designers and engineers so prototypes can actually be tested with users.





Standing up proper evaluation for anything AI-powered, including golden datasets, offline evals, human review, guardrails, and cost and latency budgets.

Establishing delivery systems around it: agentic workflows with human oversight, continuous delivery, test strategy, observability, security, and privacy by design. Mentoring engineers onto lighthouse projects and sharing knowledge broadly across internal and external communities. Strong proficiency in Python or TypeScript, with working knowledge of the other, alongside experience shipping production code in at least one additional language.

Hands-on experience with major LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Vertex), RAG and vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, Elastic), and agent frameworks (LangGraph, LangChain, LlamaIndex). Proficiency in offline/online evaluations, golden datasets, LLM-as-judge patterns, tracing, and cost monitoring using tools like Braintrust, LangSmith, Langfuse, or custom harnesses. Active adoption of AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Replit) and rapid prototyping platforms (v0, Lovable, Figma Make) to accelerate delivery.

Cloud platforms & DevOps: Deep expertise in AWS, GCP, or Azure, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), containerization (Kubernetes, Docker), and automated CI/CD pipelines.

Software architecture & integration: Solid foundation in API design, event-driven streaming (Kafka, Kinesis, Pub/Sub), microservices, and integrating with enterprise legacy systems.

Data engineering & analytics: Experience with modern data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks) and orchestration tools (dbt, Airflow, Dagster)



to design architectures for AI workloads.

Frontend development & modern practices: Capability to build prototypes using React/Next.js, alongside engineering practices like TDD, pair programming, continuous deployment, and threat modeling (OWASP LLM). Regional & cross-cultural engagement: Experience delivering in GCC markets or international settings, with Arabic language proficiency or public advocacy (talks, open source, publications) being a strong plus. Comfortable and clear when presenting to diverse groups, facilitating workshops, leading pitches, or writing documentation that remains impactful asynchronously.

Fluent in outcome-driven delivery, continuous discovery, hypothesis testing, and focusing on minimum lovable products over output alone. Skilled at guiding, pairing with, and unblocking engineers, empowering team members from all backgrounds to grow and own their work. Work on flagship projects that deliver meaningful outcomes, where your contributions gain wide recognition across client teams and industry spaces.

Global perspective and variety: Collaborate across diverse general markets, industries, and multidisciplinary teams, continually enriching your experience. Stay actively engaged with technology leadership without sacrificing practical engineering judgment or hands-on innovation.

Shaping the future of AI: Help define best practices for AI-first product development at the intersection of technology, product strategy, and user experience. Expect regular time in Riyadh and other GCC client sites — roughly 40% regional travel — plus occasional global (:10%) for CXPD-wide gatherings, cross-region pursuits and knowledge sharing. At Thoughtworks, we use AI tools to support our recruitment team with administrative tasks such as drafting communications, scheduling interviews and writing job descriptions.

We actively manage our AI systems by testing, monitoring for biased outcomes and implementing mitigation measures.

📌 Frontend Engineering Manager (React) (Madrid)
🏢 Thoughtworks
📍 Madrid