Principal Platform Engineer — Hybrid (SC Cleared)

Rowden; West of England; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Rowden in Bristol, UK is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer to define and lead the internal developer platform, underpinning how Rowden develops, deploys, and operates technology. You will guide architecture, raise engineering standards, and ensure scalability, security, and reliability across the organisation.

You will work closely with Software, Infrastructure, ML, IT, Product, QA, and Security teams, owning the platform vision and delivering a high-impact foundation for Rowden's

Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing, building, and operating engineering platforms at scale.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, system design, and platform product thinking.
• Experience designing platforms for AI workloads and integration patterns.

Responsibilities

• Define and deliver robust platform services and self-service infrastructure patterns.
• Architect IDP capabilities, including deployment workflows and automation.
• Lead API-first architecture and integration layers across systems and partners.
• Own CI/CD pipelines and security guardrails for scalable software delivery.
• Drive observability, monitoring, and reliability improvements across services.
• Mentor engineers and raise the organisation's platform engineering standards.
• Embed security, compliance, and best practices by design within the platform.
• Define and maintain reusable platform components and governance.

Skills

Platform design

CI/CD

Kubernetes

Terraform

FluxCD

Security by design

Python/Go

Platform product thinking

Mentoring engineers

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

FluxCD

Job description

Rowden in Bristol, UK is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer to define and lead the internal developer platform, underpinning how Rowden develops, deploys, and operates technology. You will guide architecture, raise engineering standards, and ensure scalability, security, and reliability across the organisation.

You will work closely with Software, Infrastructure, ML, IT, Product, QA, and Security teams, owning the platform vision and delivering a high-impact foundation for Rowden's