Principal Platform Engineer

Xact Placements Limited; Remote; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading cybersecurity scale-up is seeking an experienced Principal Platform Engineer to join their fully remote team in the UK. This role involves designing and evolving distributed systems while solving complex scalability and performance challenges. Ideal candidates will have significant experience with cloud platforms, infrastructure-as-code, and observability tools. This is an exciting opportunity to influence technical direction in a fast-growing, research-led company that serves global clients.

Qualifications

• Significant experience building and operating distributed systems at scale.
• Strong cloud background (AWS/Azure), Terraform and Kubernetes.
• Experience with observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, EFK) and messaging systems (Kafka).

Responsibilities

• Designing and evolving distributed, multi-region infrastructure.
• Solving complex scaling, reliability, and performance challenges.
• Driving DevOps performance across deployment, availability, and recovery.
• Improving observability, fault tolerance, and operational maturity.
• Championing infrastructure-as-code, automation, and secure-by-design practices.
• Collaborating across engineering, product, and security teams.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Cloud services (AWS/Azure)

Terraform

Kubernetes

Observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana)

Messaging systems (Kafka)

Networking fundamentals

Job description

Principal Platform Engineer | High-Growth Cybersecurity Scale-Up | Fully Remote (UK based)

An opportunity to join a fast-growing, research-led cybersecurity scale-up trusted by global enterprise customers. Backed by strong funding and industry recognition, the business is scaling its platform globally and is looking for an experienced Principal Platform Engineer to help lead that growth.

What you’ll be doing

• Designing and evolving distributed, multi-region infrastructure
• Solving complex scaling, reliability and performance challenges
• Driving DevOps performance across deployment, availability and recovery
• Improving observability, fault tolerance and operational maturity
• Championing infrastructure-as-code, automation and secure‑by‑design practices
• Collaborating across engineering, product and security teams

What they’re looking for

• Significant experience building and operating distributed systems at scale
• Strong cloud background (AWS/Azure), Terraform and Kubernetes
• Experience with observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, EFK) and messaging systems (Kafka)
• Solid understanding of networking fundamentals and global architecture
• Comfortable operating at Principal level and influencing technical direction