Principal Platform Engineer: Cloud, IoT & APIs

NRG Energy; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 225,000 - 285,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid holidays

Medical/dental/vision

401(k) Employer Match

Employee Resource Groups

Innovation Weeks

Flexible PTO

Job summary

NRG Energy, through its Vivint Smart Home subsidiary, seeks a Principal Platform Engineer to steer technical direction for cloud services, event pipelines, APIs, and IoT integrations powering millions of connected homes in Seattle. This senior IC role requires hands-on leadership across multiple teams and disciplines.

You will define architecture, set reliability and security standards, and mentor engineers while collaborating with Product and Security to align the platform with business

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years building and operating production systems with senior-level experience.
• Expert-level skills in Go, Python, Java, or similar back-end languages.
• Track record designing and operating large-scale distributed systems with high availability and low latency.
• Cloud-native infrastructure experience: containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and AWS or GCP.
• Experience setting technical direction across teams and driving standards.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical strategy and multi-year architecture for core platform services, event pipelines, and APIs.
• Lead design of high-scale, low-latency distributed systems processing real-time events from millions of devices.
• Own cross-team technical decisions and review designs across mobile, backend, embedded, and data teams.
• Set standards for reliability, security, observability, and operability (SLOs, production readiness).
• Remain hands-on: build prototypes and critical components; lead resolution of major production issues.
• Identify technical debt and platform risks; drive remediation plans, including build-vs-buy decisions.
• Mentor senior and staff engineers; help set hiring bar and engineering culture for Seattle team.
• Partner with Product, Security, and leadership to align platform roadmap with business priorities.

Skills

Go, Python, Java

Cloud-native infra

Distributed systems

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/SE

Tools

Containers/Kubernetes

CI/CD

AWS/GCP

Job description

NRG Energy, through its Vivint Smart Home subsidiary, seeks a Principal Platform Engineer to steer technical direction for cloud services, event pipelines, APIs, and IoT integrations powering millions of connected homes in Seattle. This senior IC role requires hands-on leadership across multiple teams and disciplines.

You will define architecture, set reliability and security standards, and mentor engineers while collaborating with Product and Security to align the platform with business