Principal Platform Engineer

Institutional Shareholder Services Inc.; Greater London; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Global team collaboration

Career development opportunities

Job summary

ISS STOXX is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer to lead and evolve our global cloud platforms across GCP and AWS. You will shape architecture, implement AWS landing zones, and build self-service tooling and CI/CD capabilities to boost developer productivity.

You will role-model best practices in observability, automation, and security while enabling AI workloads and enterprise-scale solutions. Collaborate with engineering, security, and product teams to deliver measurable business value.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in platform/cloud engineering or related
• Experience designing cloud-native platforms on GCP and/or AWS
• Experience maturing cloud landing zones and governance
• Deep understanding of cloud architectures: containers, Kubernetes, serverless, APIs
• Hands-on with Terraform and IaC
• Experience with large-scale CI/CD and automation
• Proven track record enabling AI on cloud platforms
• Strong software engineering with Python
• Experience with GitHub Actions and cloud-native tooling
• Observability: DataDog/Prometheus/Grafana/ELK/Splunk

Responsibilities

• Shape architecture and operational excellence of ISS STOXX cloud platforms (GCP/AWS)
• Design and mature AWS landing zones to align with governance and developer experience
• Develop platform services, self-service capabilities, CI/CD tooling, observability
• Contribute to AI transformation by building platform capabilities for AI workloads
• Act as technical authority during incidents and guide resolution
• Evaluate emerging tech and translate ideas into reusable capabilities
• Define technical direction with engineering and product teams
• Drive reliability, observability, automation, security, and developer experience
• Mentor engineers and promote best practices across teams
• Balance innovation with operational excellence to enable rapid value delivery

Skills

Platform engineering

GCP

AWS

Terraform

CI/CD tooling

Observability

Python

Kubernetes

AI workloads

Multi-cloud

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Engineering

Tools

GitHub Actions

Apigee

Airflow

DataDog

Prometheus

Grafana

ELK

Splunk

Job description

ISS STOXX is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer to join our global Platform Engineering function, responsible for the cloud platforms, engineering capabilities, and operational foundations that support our products and services worldwide. Working across both GCP and AWS, you will help shape the next evolution of our platform engineering capability. A key focus of the role will be extending and maturing our multi‑cloud platform strategy, including the development of AWS landing zone capabilities that align with the standards, automation, governance, and developer experience established within our GCP platform. Alongside this, you will play an important role in enabling the organisation's AI transformation. Building on our existing cloud platform foundations, you will help develop the tooling, patterns, operational capabilities, and platform services required to support AI‑powered applications, agentic workflows, and emerging AI technologies at enterprise scale. As a Principal Engineer, you will work closely with peers across engineering, architecture, security, and product teams to solve complex technical challenges and influence technical direction through expertise, collaboration, and delivery. You will evaluate emerging technologies, develop proof‑of‑concepts, and help translate promising ideas into practical, reusable capabilities that add value across the business. We're looking for someone who combines deep platform engineering expertise with strong technical judgement, creativity, and curiosity. You should be equally comfortable designing cloud platforms, improving engineering practices, automating complex processes, and exploring how emerging technologies can be applied to solve real business problems. You will thrive in a collaborative environment where success is achieved through influence rather than hierarchy, where platform engineering is viewed as an enabler for product teams, and where balancing innovation with operational excellence is fundamental to long‑term success.

Responsibilities:

• Shape the architecture, evolution, and operational excellence of ISS STOXX's global cloud platforms across GCP and AWS, ensuring they remain secure, scalable, resilient, and easy for engineering teams to consume.
• Design, build, and mature AWS landing zone capabilities that align with the standards, governance, automation, security controls, and developer experience established with our GCP platform.
• Develop and enhance platform services, self‑service capabilities, CI/CD tooling, observability solutions, and automation frameworks that improve developer productivity and operational effectiveness.
• Contribute to our AI transformation by building the platform capabilities, tooling, operational patterns, and guardrails required to support AI‑powered applications, agentic workflows, and emerging AI technologies at enterprise scale.
• Act as a technical authority for complex platform engineering challenges, providing hands‑on leadership during critical incidents and guiding the resolution of high‑impact technical problems.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, develop proof‑of‑concepts, and translate successful innovations into practical, reusable platform capabilities that deliver measurable business value.
• Partner with engineering, architecture, security, and product teams to define technical direction, establish engineering standards, and ensure platform capabilities meet current and future business requirements.
• Drive continuous improvement across platform reliability, observability, automation, security, cost efficiency, and developer experience through data‑driven engineering practices.
• Mentor and support engineers across the organisation, promoting platform engineering best practices, technical excellence, and a culture of continuous learning and collaboration.
• Contribute to the long‑term evolution of the Platform and AI Engineering functions, helping balance operational excellence with innovation while enabling teams to deliver value quickly and safely.

Requirements:

• At least 10 years' experience in platform engineering, cloud engineering, or related disciplines, with a proven track record of designing and operating large‑scale enterprise platforms.
• Strong experience designing and implementing cloud‑native platforms and engineering capabilities on GCP and/or AWS.
• Experience building or maturing cloud landing zones, platform governance frameworks, and self‑service developer platforms.
• Deep understanding of modern cloud architectures, including containers, Kubernetes, serverless technologies, APIs, networking, security, and identity management.
• Strong hands‑on expertise with Infrastructure as Code, with master proficiency in Terraform.
• Experience developing and operating large‑scale CI/CD, automation, and platform engineering capabilities that improve developer productivity and operational excellence.
• Experience evaluating emerging technologies, developing proof‑of‑concepts, and translating successful concepts into production‑ready platform capabilities.
• Practical experience enabling AI and data‑driven workloads on cloud platforms, including familiarity with the tooling, operational considerations, and governance requirements associated with modern AI solutions.
• Strong software engineering and automation skills, with expertise in Python and experience building reusable tooling and platform services.
• Experience with modern platform and engineering tooling such as GitHub Actions, Apigee, Airflow, and related cloud‑native technologies.
• Expertise with observability platforms such as Data Dog, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Splunk or equivalent, including monitoring, logging, tracing, reliability engineering, and incident management.
• Sound technical judgement with the ability to balance innovation, risk, operational excellence, and business outcomes.
• Proven ability to influence technical direction, build consensus, and drive adoption of engineering best practices across multiple teams.
• Experience coaching and mentoring engineers, fostering technical excellence, continuous learning, and collaborative problem‑solving.
• Experience working effectively within global, distributed, or multinational engineering organisations.
• Excellent communication, documentation, and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• A pragmatic, outcome‑focused approach with a passion for simplicity, automation, observability, and continuous improvement.
• Willingness to participate in out‑of‑hours support and major incident escalation when required.
• Nice to have: Experience building platforms that support AI‑powered applications, machine learning workloads, or agentic systems.
• Experience with GCP AI services, vector databases, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), model operations, or AI governance frameworks.
• Experience operating in multi‑cloud environments and helping organisations establish consistent platform standards across cloud providers.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• #LI-TG1 #STOXX # DIRECTOR

What You Can Expect from Us

Our people are the moving force behind our work. We are committed to building a culture that values diverse skills, perspectives, and experiences. If you have the skills, passion, and drive to help us bring clarity and transparency to capital markets, we want to work with you. Together, we can grow your career in an environment that fuels creativity, drives innovation, and has real impact.

About ISS STOXX

ISS STOXX delivers world‑class research, data, and technology solutions that empower capital market participants to pursue their visions with confidence. Our expertise spans indices, corporate governance, sustainability, cyber risk, and fund intelligence, giving clients the tools they need to uncover opportunities, manage risks, and navigate evolving regulations. We are made up of 4,000 professionals operating across 20 countries and serving approximately 5,000 clients, including many of the world’s leading institutional investors. Our scale and reach give us deep market knowledge, while our innovative methodologies allow us to offer our clients tailored insights that drive impact and success. ISS STOXX Indices, including the renowned STOXX and DAX families, sets the standard for rules‑based, transparent, and liquid benchmarks and indices. Our ready‑made products and customized solutions are used by sophisticated institutional investors, ETF issuers, and providers of derivatives and structured products. Visit our website: https://www.iss‑stoxx.com/ Learn more: https://stoxx.com/ View additional open roles: https://www.iss‑stoxx.com/about/careers/ ISS STOXX is committed to fostering, cultivating, and preserving a culture of diversity and inclusion. It is our policy to prohibit discrimination or harassment against any applicant or employee on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, creed, religion, sex, age, height, weight, citizenship status, national origin, social origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, pregnancy status, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, veteran status, military service or status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law (referred to as “protected status”). All activities including, but not limited to, recruiting and hiring, recruitment advertising, promotions, performance appraisals, training, job assignments, compensation, demotions, transfers, terminations (including layoffs), benefits, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment, are and will be administered on a non‑discriminatory basis, consistent with all applicable federal, state, and local requirements. ISS STOXX delivers world‑class research, data, and technology solutions that empower capital market participants to pursue their visions with confidence. Our expertise spans indices, corporate governance, sustainability, cyber risk, and fund intelligence, giving clients the tools they need to uncover opportunities, manage risks, and navigate evolving regulations. We are made up of 4,000 professionals operating across 20 countries and serving approximately 5,000 clients, including many of the world’s leading institutional investors. Our scale and reach give us deep market knowledge, while our innovative methodologies allow us to offer our clients tailored insights that drive impact and success.