Principal Platform Engineer

Jobtailor; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to define and evolve the AWS cloud platform strategy, architecture and roadmap. You will design scalable, secure and resilient platform capabilities, while building self-service tooling to boost developer productivity and automate key operational processes.

You will lead complex platform initiatives, mentor engineers, and drive best practices for reliability, observability and governance, influencing senior stakeholders on technology choices.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and operating internal developer platforms at scale.
• Experience building reusable platform services, tooling, and self-service capabilities.
• Experience applying platform-as-a-product principles.
• Experience establishing standards and paved-road approaches.
• Experience designing highly available, scalable, and resilient cloud-native architectures.
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, networking, identity, and security.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code and automated cloud provisioning.
• Experience with CI/CD and automated software delivery.
• Experience automating operational processes and platform lifecycle management.
• Experience establishing repeatable, standardised engineering workflows.
• Experience designing for resilience, fault tolerance, observability, and operational excellence.
• Experience applying SRE principles and practices.
• Experience in performance analysis, capacity planning, scalability engineering, and proactive reliability improvement.
• Experience establishing service-level objectives, monitoring, alerting, and operational practices.
• Experience providing technical leadership across multiple engineering teams or a wider engineering organisation.
• Ability to influence architecture and technical direction without relying solely on organisational authority.
• Experience leading complex technical initiatives and driving decisions through ambiguity.
• Experience mentoring senior and developing engineers and creating a culture of knowledge sharing and technical excellence.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for an AWS cloud platform.
• Design and build scalable, secure, resilient, and reusable platform capabilities.
• Develop self-service tooling and services to improve developer productivity.
• Drive automation across infrastructure, application delivery, operational processes, and platform management.
• Establish platform standards, engineering patterns, and best practices.
• Improve platform reliability, scalability, performance, observability, and operational efficiency.
• Reduce engineering friction and accelerate software delivery.
• Establish engineering principles and guardrails for security, reliability, and governance.
• Lead complex platform initiatives from discovery and architectural design through implementation and operational adoption.
• Influence engineering teams and senior stakeholders on platform strategy and technology choices.
• Mentor and develop engineers and promote strong platform engineering practices.
• Champion automation, ownership, continuous improvement, and operational excellence

Skills

AWS platform architecture

Platform engineering

Self-service tooling

CI/CD automation

SRE practices

Infrastructure as Code

Security & identity

Distributed systems

Networking

Stakeholder influence

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Git

CI/CD tooling

Job description

• Define and evolve the technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for an AWS cloud platform
• Design and build scalable, secure, resilient, and reusable platform capabilities
• Develop self-service tooling and services to improve developer productivity
• Drive automation across infrastructure, application delivery, operational processes, and platform management
• Establish platform standards, engineering patterns, and best practices
• Improve platform reliability, scalability, performance, observability, and operational efficiency
• Reduce engineering friction and accelerate software delivery
• Establish engineering principles and guardrails for security, reliability, and governance
• Lead complex platform initiatives from discovery and architectural design through implementation and operational adoption
• Influence engineering teams and senior stakeholders on platform strategy and technology choices
• Mentor and develop engineers and promote strong platform engineering practices
• Champion automation, ownership, continuous improvement, and operational excellence

Requirements

• Significant experience designing and operating internal developer platforms at scale
• Experience building reusable platform services, tooling, and self-service capabilities
• Experience applying platform-as-a-product principles
• Experience establishing standards and paved-road approaches
• Experience designing highly available, scalable, and resilient cloud-native architectures
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, networking, identity, and security
• Experience making architectural trade-offs across reliability, scalability, performance, cost, and developer experience
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code and automated cloud provisioning
• Experience with CI/CD and automated software delivery
• Experience automating operational processes and platform lifecycle management
• Experience establishing repeatable, standardised engineering workflows
• Experience designing for resilience, fault tolerance, observability, and operational excellence
• Experience applying SRE principles and practices
• Experience in performance analysis, capacity planning, scalability engineering, and proactive reliability improvement
• Experience establishing service-level objectives, monitoring, alerting, and operational practices
• Experience providing technical leadership across multiple engineering teams or a wider engineering organisation
• Ability to influence architecture and technical direction without relying solely on organisational authority
• Experience leading complex technical initiatives and driving decisions through ambiguity
• Experience mentoring senior and developing engineers and creating a culture of knowledge sharing and technical excellence

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expertise in designing and operating scalable, secure, and resilient AWS cloud platforms while applying platform-as-a-product principles. Proven ability to lead complex technical initiatives, mentor engineers, and establish best practices for operational excellence and automation.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• AWS Cloud Platform Architecture
• Infrastructure as Code
• CI/CD Automation
• Platform-as-a-Product Principles
• Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Practices

ATS Optimization Keywords

Hard Skills

• Cloud Infrastructure
• Distributed Systems
• Networking
• Security
• Performance Analysis
• Capacity Planning
• Scalability Engineering
• Operational Excellence
• Monitoring and Alerting
• Fault Tolerance

Soft Skills

• Technical Leadership
• Mentoring
• Influencing Stakeholders
• Knowledge Sharing
• Continuous Improvement

Industry Keywords

• Platform Engineering
• Cloud-Native Architectures
• Engineering Workflows
• Service-Level Objectives
• Operational Practices

Tools & Technologies

• Automated Cloud Provisioning
• Self-Service Tooling
• Engineering Standards
• Operational Processes
• Developer Productivity Tools