Platform Principal Engineer

Parser Limited; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Flexible working environment

Competitive compensation

Job summary

Parser Limited seeks an Azure Principal Platform Engineer to design and implement a greenfield AKS platform on Azure, guiding an internal platform team and upskilling engineers. You will lead platform operating models, SPI communications, and best-practice cloud-native patterns.

You will shape the architecture, governance, and observability stack for scalable, multi-tenant workloads in production, with a strong emphasis on IaC, GitOps, and secure, compliant design.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience operating multi-cluster AKS in production environments.
• Experience architecting and building complex Kubernetes platforms from scratch.
• Kubernetes platform engineering including ingress/service mesh, OPA/Gatekeeper, secrets management, and progressive delivery.

Responsibilities

• Architect and bootstrap a greenfield, multi-tenant AKS platform.
• Serve as the Kubernetes SME guiding long-term architectural direction.
• Establish an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) operating model.
• Upskill and mentor the in-house engineering team.
• Design and implement enterprise-grade logging, metrics, and tracing for Kubernetes.
• Lead Infrastructure as Code state strategy, module design and drift management.

Skills

AKS multi-tenant

Kubernetes platform engineering

Terraform

OpenTelemetry

GitOps (Argo CD/Flux)

OPA/Gatekeeper

Azure landing zones

Cloud security & IAM

Tools

Spacelift

Atlantis

Terraform Cloud

Open Tofu modules

Job description

This position allows you to join a fast-growing technology organisation focused on the critical migration and architectural evolution of our .NET services from AWS to Azure. If you are passionate about cloud-native transformation and want to lead the shift toward asynchronous, high-scale architectures, this opportunity is for you.

Role Summary

As an Azure Principal Platform Engineer, you will act as the authoritative Subject Matter Expert (SME) to help a major fintech architect, bootstrap, and build from scratch an enterprise-grade, multi-tenant AKS platform on a greenfield Azure landing zone. Crucially, you will guide the establishment of an internal platform team, designing the platform operating model and upskilling in-house engineers along the way. You will also collaborate to upskill the in-house team along the way.

The Impact You'll Make:

• Architect and Bootstrap: Design and provision a greenfield, highly-scalable, multi-tenant AKS platform from the ground up (focusing on underlying cluster architecture, not just workload deployment).
• Act as the Kubernetes Reference (SME): Serve as the authoritative internal expert for the vast Kubernetes ecosystem, filling a critical knowledge gap and guiding our long-term architectural direction.
• Establish a Platform Operating Model: Help structure and establish an Internal Developer Platform (IDP), defining how the new platform team will interact with and empower developer teams through self-service capabilities.
• Upskill and Mentor: Transition the in-house engineering team into a high-performing internal platform team throughout the platform build process.
• Observability: Design and implement enterprise-grade logging, metrics, and tracing for Kubernetes at scale.
• IaC Leadership: Implement and manage Infrastructure as Code to a senior standard, taking charge of state strategy, module design, and drift management.

Technology Stack (Main Technologies):

• Azure Core: Multi-subscription landing zones, hub-and-spoke networking, Entra ID, Azure Policy, Private Link, Key Vault, Azure RBAC. (MUST)
• AKS Platform Architecture: Building strict multi-tenant environments, logical isolation (namespaces/RBAC), network policies, resource quotas, upgrade strategies, node pools, and workload identity. (MUST)
• Advanced Kubernetes Ecosystem: Deep understanding of control plane mechanics, custom resource definitions (CRDs), and operators. (MUST)
• IaC: Terraform / Open Tofu module design. (MUST)
• Kubernetes Engineering: GitOps (Argo CD/Flux), secrets management, ingress/mesh, and OPA/Gatekeeper. (MUST)
• Observability: OpenTelemetry (MUST)
• Tooling: Spacelift, Atlantis, or Terraform Cloud (Desired)
• Governance: EPAC (Enterprise Policy as Code) (Desired)

What You'll Bring To Us:

• Recent, hands-on experience operating multi-cluster AKS in production environments, either multi-region or multi-tenant.
• Proven experience building and architecting complex Kubernetes platforms from scratch.
• Experience with Kubernetes platform engineering, including ingress and service mesh, OPA / Gatekeeper policy, secrets management, and progressive delivery.
• Strong security awareness, displaying comfort with CAF / ALZ patterns, least-privilege IAM, network segmentation, and policy-as-code.
• Experience working with regulated or financial services workloads on Azure.
• FinOps instincts for managing AKS and networking costs effectively.

What We'll Offer You In Return:

• The chance to join an organization with triple-digit growth that is changing the paradigm of how software products are built.
• The opportunity to form part of an amazing, multicultural community of tech experts.
• A highly competitive compensation package.
• A flexible working environment.
• Medical insurance.

Come and join our #ParserCommunity. https://parserdigital.com/