Principal Platform Engineer: API Gateways & Edge

Anaplan; Manchester; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Anaplan in Manchester, UK is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead the design, delivery and architecture of platform capabilities powering the enterprise-scale API gateways, edge routing, and developer acceleration.

You will build and scale high-throughput backend engines, ensure multi-tenant isolation, and drive GitOps-based deployment, observability, and cross-service integration. Mentoring engineers worldwide and setting technical direction are central to this role.

Qualifications

• Extensive background in software engineering within enterprise-scale, high-throughput platform or data-centric environments.
• Understand, leverage, and integrate modern AI tools and concepts—including agentic programming patterns and LLM-assisted workflows—to accelerate platform engineering and developer velocity.
• Deep expertise in backend JVM languages (Java and/or Kotlin) with a strong understanding of distributed systems internals.
• Proven track record of delivering API-first infrastructures, API Gateways (e.g., Traefik), and edge routing solutions that guarantee enterprise reliability under sustained traffic loads (2K+ requests per second).
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, containerized deployments, and managing complex CI/CD pipelines (strong familiarity with GitOps, ArgoCD, and high-velocity release workflows).
• Solid grounding in event-driven architecture, real-time data processing, and managing complex database transaction scopes at scale.
• Experience balancing rapid prototyping and fast iteration with long-term sustainability and quality—you have a bias for action and prefer to try and iterate rather than wait for perfect information.
• Exceptional technical communicator with a proven ability to align globally distributed teams. You are highly skilled at distilling complex concepts into clear, structured RFCs and architectural designs to build consensus.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, delivery, and architecture of platform capabilities powering Anaplan’s enterprise-scale API gateways, edge routing, and developer acceleration.
• Build and scale high-throughput backend engines that manage core request orchestration, seamless multi-tenant isolation, and API-first solutions serving thousands of tenants and tens of thousands of users.
• Partner with architects and senior engineers across the Platform Experience domain to set technical direction, aligning implementation patterns for complex initiatives (like Vanity URLs, JWT auth flows, and cross-service proxying).
• Drive the evolution of our deployment infrastructure, championing modern GitOps workflows (ArgoCD, Helm) and highly available containerized orchestration.
• Own foundational features end-to-end—from design through to production—while continuously improving system observability, implementing intelligent rate-limiting, and solving complex concurrency challenges (e.g., database locks and connection starvation).
• Deliver thought leadership and coding excellence across Java/Kotlin, ensuring seamless integration between backend microservices and UI components (including resolving complex CORS and distributed edge proxy requirements).
• Mentor and elevate engineers across global teams through design reviews, pair programming, and hands-on leadership to foster a resilient engineering culture.

Skills

Backend JVM (Java/Kotlin)

Distributed systems

API-first architectures

Kubernetes / Docker

GitOps / ArgoCD

Leadership / mentoring

Technical communication

Tools

Traefik

ArgoCD

Job description

Anaplan in Manchester, UK is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead the design, delivery and architecture of platform capabilities powering the enterprise-scale API gateways, edge routing, and developer acceleration.

You will build and scale high-throughput backend engines, ensure multi-tenant isolation, and drive GitOps-based deployment, observability, and cross-service integration. Mentoring engineers worldwide and setting technical direction are central to this role.