Principal Platform Engineer - AI-Powered Internal Platform

IFS; Staines-upon-Thames; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

IFS is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer focused on the Internal Developer Platform (IDP) to drive end-to-end implementation, configuration, and ongoing support. You will enable product teams with self-service infrastructure, service catalogs, and pipelines, working closely with Kairos and Nexus in a production environment.

This deeply technical, delivery-focused role requires hands-on engineering across the NGA stack and collaboration across platform teams to shape the IDP roadmap and

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience building or operating IDPs in production environments.
• Experience with IDP tooling: Backstage, Port, Cortex, or comparable platforms.
• Experience implementing service catalogs, scaffolders, golden paths, and self-service infrastructure workflows.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and cloud-native infrastructure integration.
• Strong capability across NGA stack: Backend Go, Frontend React (Next.js), Messaging Kafka/RedPanda, Data PostgreSQL.

Responsibilities

• Implement, configure, and maintain the IFS Internal Developer Platform (IDP) end-to-end.
• Build self-service workflows, service catalogue entries, scaffolders, and golden path templates.
• Integrate IDP tooling with Kairos and Nexus.
• Build and maintain CI/CD integration patterns for product teams.
• Create and maintain developer-facing documentation, guides, and enablement materials.
• Provide platform support and technical enablement to product development teams.
• Contribute to platform standards, architectural decisions, and the IDP roadmap.
• Identify and resolve platform reliability and performance issues.
• Collaborate with Platform Lead and adjacent teams.

Skills

Hands-on IDP experience

Platform engineering

Cloud-native infrastructure

Kubernetes

Tools

Backstage

Port

Cortex

Job description

IFS is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer focused on the Internal Developer Platform (IDP) to drive end-to-end implementation, configuration, and ongoing support. You will enable product teams with self-service infrastructure, service catalogs, and pipelines, working closely with Kairos and Nexus in a production environment.

This deeply technical, delivery-focused role requires hands-on engineering across the NGA stack and collaboration across platform teams to shape the IDP roadmap and