Principle One is growing fast. Over the course of a busy 2022, we welcomed seventeen new permanent staff onto our team with a wide range of backgrounds, skillsets and experience. This has let us broaden the work that we do, offering multi-disciplinary teams across an increasing range of customers and taking on the challenges that are critical in achieving their missions.
At the heart of our growth is our systems engineering and architecture community, which makes us uniquely placed to coach, mentor and train our technical workforce, enabling knowledge sharing and improving consistency in our ways of working. This lets us recruit staff at all levels, confident that we have the support structures in place to help them rapidly progress in their careers and contribute to our customers in sectors such as Law Enforcement, National Security and Health from the very outset.
Chris Spearing joined Principle One in 2018 and has been instrumental in building that community and driving growth. Chris has enjoyed the diversity of work that he’s been able to get involved in; from rapid prototype development and the creation of alpha capability through to architecting and delivery of a complex software solution as part of a multi-year change programme for UK Law Enforcement. “We often get involved in the early stages, when there is typically a high level of ambiguity to resolve, often needing to rapidly make assumptions to progress, balancing the need to carry risk against that of falling into analysis paralysis. This is where our multi-disciplinary approach pays off, and I value being able to work with a diverse team of colleagues who bring different perspectives and can both challenge and support each other.”
In the last five years, Chris has seen the roles and opportunities for Principle One change significantly as we have become able to offer customers larger teams rather than simply providing a single resource with subject matter expertise into a customer programme. “My preferred role on a project is as Engineering Manager, focusing on bringing a cohesive and efficient engineering approach, often across multiple suppliers and inter-related workstreams. A major milestone I anticipate for Principle One in the next five years will be when a customer comes to us exclusively to deliver an entire solution and we can establish our ways of working from the very outset and accelerate delivery.”
Andrew Sadler was Principle One’s first graduate hire, also joining in 2018, but bringing experience as a software developer on secure government projects from an industrial placement completed as part of his degree. “I’ve always been interested in designing as well as building software solutions and understanding the ‘why’ so was keen to explore opportunities in architecture from the very start of my career at Principle One. One of the reasons I chose Principle One over a larger company was that I knew I would have the support of senior architects to help, guide and advise and our collaborative culture ensures that we share best practice and lessons learnt effectively across the team."
For Andrew, the nature of the project work is also important. "Making an impact with the work that I do is important to me, and for a smaller company, Principle One really punches above its weight. From the very beginning, I’ve been able to work on high profile projects for our Law Enforcement customers that make a real difference to front line policing.”
This summer, we were delighted to welcome Adele Donovan onto the Principle One team. Adele has worked for a broad range of organisations in her consulting career and taken on a range of different roles but considers herself first and foremost a systems engineer. Since joining us, she has been acting as a Technical Lead on a complex transformation programme in the Health sector, where a holistic, systems-based approach has been essential to managing multiple workstreams and suppliers towards a step change in patient services.
“One of the reasons that I joined Principle One, is that the focus for staff development isn’t just about building technical skills. There is little point in doing the analysis and determining the right technical answer to a client’s problem if you can’t get client, stakeholder and supplier buy-in or work effectively as a team to deliver. As well as supporting and coaching a team on a day-to-day basis as part of my customer-facing role, I’ve been able to use my experience to contribute to developing training materials to help staff develop their softer skills and have the ‘courageous conversations’ with customers that are often needed to achieve the right outcome when working at pace. The supportive culture at Principle One allows us to be open with each other, explore difficult topics and work to create a compassionate and confident workforce.”
With an exciting pipeline of new opportunities in 2023, we have open roles for Systems Engineers and Technical Architects to join our team at all levels. If you are interested in finding out more about opportunities at Principle One, you can read more here or contact us directly at careers@principleone.co.uk.
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