Principal Platform Engineer

watchTowr; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

watchTowr is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer to scale our automated scanning platform for global reach. You will be a senior technical lead in Platform Engineering, owning distributed systems, high throughput networking, and resilient infrastructure for enterprise customers across regions.

You will partner with Product, Security, and Engineering to push DevOps maturity, improve observability, and implement secure-by-design practices.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing and implementing scalable, distributed systems and high-throughput networked architectures.
• Experience with cybersecurity platforms or security data at scale (Threat Intelligence or Offensive Security-type solutions).
• Proven track record building engineering organisations in early-stage, B2B startups serving enterprise clients.
• Experience scaling high-throughput and distributed systems in production.
• Hands-on cloud infrastructure setup, operations, and maintenance.
• Experience with Agile methodologies and cross-functional teams.
• Strong OSI Layer 3+ networking and performance optimization knowledge.
• Familiarity with regulatory/data sovereignty requirements (SG/US/UK/EU).

Responsibilities

• Architect, scale, and optimise distributed scanning infrastructure for global scale.
• Advance DevOps performance and delivery excellence: deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTI.
• Solve complex scaling challenges across compute, data pipelines, networking, and orchestration.
• Evolve from single-region to multi-region/global architecture.
• Collaborate with Product, Security, and Engineering teams to meet evolving needs.
• Champion engineering best practices: IaC, automation-by-default, high-quality docs, secure-by-design.
• Drive continuous improvement and reliability across the platform.

Skills

Distributed systems

High throughput networking

DevOps

SRE best practices

OSint / Threat intel familiarity

Cloud platforms AWS/Azure

Kubernetes (AWS EKS)

Terraform (IaC)

Docker/Docker Compose

PostgreSQL / MongoDB / Redis / Kafka

GitHub Actions / CodeBuild

Observability tools (Grafana, Prom?)

Python / Node.js / Go

Tools

AWS

Azure

GitHub

Terraform

Kubernetes (AWS EKS)

Helm

Docker

Docker Compose

EFK stack

Prometheus

Jaeger/OpenTelemetry

Grafana

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Redis

Elasticsearch

Kafka

Airflow

Job description

Hello, let us introduce ourselves!

watchTowr is the Preemptive Exposure Management capability trusted by Fortune 500 companies and critical infrastructure providers.

By combining proactive threat intelligence, real attacker telemetry, and automated red teaming, watchTowr continuously identifies and validates real exposure - so security teams can outrun real-world threats.

When exploitation happens in hours, watchTowr delivers what no one else can: time to respond.

We are a global team of operators, researchers, and engineers who have spent years thinking like attackers - and we are now building the technology to stop them. Our work is recognised across the industry, with original vulnerability research from watchTowr Labs and innovations like Instinct and Attacker Eye shaping the future of cybersecurity.

Backed by $29M in funding, recognised by Gartner, and scaling fast across the globe, we are in a high-growth phase of our journey. We are a young, high-energy, and research-driven team, obsessed with building world-class technology - and we want exceptional people to join us.

But what’s the role?

We are looking for a Principal Platform Engineer with deep expertise in networking, distributed systems, and large-scale infrastructure design to help us scale our automated scanning platform to global levels. This is a pivotal hands-on engineering role focused on building high-throughput, resilient systems that can reliably support enterprise customers across regions.

As a senior technical lead within our Platform Engineering organisation, you will work on some of our hardest challenges - scaling distributed compute, improving service availability, and pushing DevOps and SRE maturity across the team as we continue to grow.

Sounds great – what will I do?

This role sits at the intersection of distributed systems engineering, DevOps, and platform architecture. You’ll work closely with the Head of Platforms to design and optimise the systems that power our global scanning network, improve the performance and reliability of our workloads, and drive engineering excellence across the organisation.

AsPrincipal Platform Engineer, you will:

• Architect, scale, and optimise our distributed scanning infrastructure, ensuring high throughput, low latency, and reliable operation at global scale.

• Advance DevOps performance and delivery excellence, continuously improving:

  • Deployment frequency

  • Change lead time

  • Change failure rate

  • Mean time to recovery

• Solve complex scaling challenges across compute, data pipelines, networking, and orchestration, including:

  • Evolving from single-region to multi-region/global architecture

  • Increasing data processing throughput across workflow pipelines

  • Improving overall system availability, observability, and fault tolerance

• Collaborate closely with Product, Security, and Engineering teams to ensure platform capabilities meet evolving business and customer needs.

• Champion engineering best practices, including infrastructure-as-code, automation-by-default, high-quality operational documentation, and secure-by-design principles.

• Drive continuous improvement, helping shape a culture of operational maturity, reliability, and engineering excellence.
  

Sounds perfect to me, what specifics are you looking for?

Ideal Experience

• 8+ years designing and implementing scalable, distributed systems and high-throughput networked architectures.

• Experience with cybersecurity platforms or security data at scale (ideally Threat Intelligence and/or Offensive Security-type solutions).

• Proven experience building engineering organisations in early-stage, B2B startups serving enterprise clients.

• Demonstrated track record scaling high-throughput and distributed systems in production.

• Hands‑on experience with cloud infrastructure setup, operations, and maintenance.

• Experience working with cross‑functional teams delivering software using Agile methodologies.

• Strong understanding of OSI Layer 3+ networking concepts and performance optimisation.

• Experience owning, operating, and upgrading systems running in production.

• Direct experience scaling a platform from a single region to a multi-region or global deployment.

• Exposure to cybersecurity platforms, high‑volume data processing, or other distributed compute environments.

• Technical proficiency across:

  • Cloud service providers: AWS, Azure, GitHub

  • Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC): Terraform

  • Application platform: Kubernetes (AWS EKS), Helm, Docker, Docker Compose

  • Observability: Elastic‑Fluent‑Kibana (EFK) stack, Prometheus, Jaeger/OpenTelemetry, Grafana

  • Persistence: PostgreSQL (RDS), MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, Kafka

  • Delivery pipelines: GitHub Actions, AWS CodeBuild

  • Workflow orchestration: Airflow, Kubernetes

  • Software runtimes: Python, Node.js, Go

• Familiarity with navigating regulatory, privacy, and data sovereignty requirements in SG, the US, UK, and EU.

What’s in it for me?

• Competitive compensation - we believe that hard work, skills and ambition should be fairly compensated.

• Meaningful role in a company - You will be a key and early contributor to a fast‑growing cybersecurity business that helps protect some of the world's largest enterprises.

• The best tools and powerful kit - we enable you with the tools to effectively fulfil your role.

• Endless opportunities – we are in a high‑growth phase of our journey, and plan to promote from within as we scale.

• Work with cyber security experts – we are solving cutting‑edge industry‑wide cyber security challenges with some of the world’s most advanced organisations.

watchTowr is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer

At watchTowr, we’re dedicated to fostering an inclusive, respectful, and diverse environment where every individual is recognised for their talent and potential. Our hiring decisions are guided by your capabilities, experience, and what you bring to the role - not by unrelated personal attributes.

We have a zero‑tolerance approach to any form of discrimination or harassment. This includes - but isn’t limited to - discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, colour, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, pregnancy or parental status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

We actively encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. Even if you don’t tick every box in the job description, we’d still love to hear from you.