Principal Platform Engineer

About the role

We are seeking a hands‑on Principal Platform Engineer to shape the future of our platform engineering capability. You will lead complex initiatives, define technical strategy, and act as a subject‑matter expert across AWS infrastructure, distributed databases, Terraform and cloud‑native services.

Key responsibilities

• Design and engineer secure, scalable, highly‑available cloud platforms.
• Build and manage AWS infrastructure using Terraform.
• Design, deploy and operate distributed systems and persistence platforms.
• Provide technical leadership and architectural guidance across multiple engineering teams.
• Define engineering standards, platform roadmaps and best practices.
• Drive automation, resilience, observability and operational‑excellence initiatives.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews, coaching and technical leadership.
• Collaborate with architects and stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions.

Required profile

• 8+ years of experience in Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, DevOps, SRE or Software Engineering.
• Expert‑level experience with AWS infrastructure.
• Strong expertise in Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.
• Solid Linux systems administration and networking knowledge.
• Proven experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale.
• Hands‑on experience with distributed database platforms.
• Deep understanding of SQL vs NoSQL, ACID principles and CAP theorem.
• Experience building highly available, fault‑tolerant architectures.
• Strong grasp of CI/CD, automation and DevOps practices.

Required skills

• AWS
• Terraform
• Linux
• Cassandra
• Couchbase
• ScyllaDB
• Kafka
• CI/CD pipelines
• Observability & monitoring platforms
• Distributed database technologies

What we offer

• Competitive salary £97,480 – £121,850 per year plus 20% flexible benefits.
• Hybrid working model (minimum 1 day per week in the London office).
• Opportunity to lead and mentor a high‑performing engineering team.
• Access to cutting‑edge cloud and database technologies.