Principal Platform Engineer - Remote UK

Cazoo Group; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 186,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension matching

Cash prizes & awards

Referral bonus

Brentford FC tickets

Annual conference

Free food & drinks

Job summary

Cazoo is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead backend and platform engineering efforts from a hands-on position. You will shape the technical roadmap for core platform capabilities, including data storage, enrichment and service delivery, while driving architecture decisions across Azure-based services and modernising legacy systems.

You will mentor engineers, contribute to hiring, and collaborate with product and commercial stakeholders to prioritise work.

Qualifications

• Seasoned backend and platform engineer with cloud-native design.
• Experience modernising legacy systems into domain-oriented services.
• Strong data modelling across relational and NoSQL stores.
• Proficient with TypeScript/Node.js on Azure stack.
• Hands-on with AI coding assistants and agentic tools.

Responsibilities

• Lead from the front as a hands-on engineer, writing production code and reviewing PRs.
• Own the technical roadmap for core platform capabilities across data storage, enrichment and serving.
• Design and delivery of domain-oriented, event-driven services on Azure and retire legacy systems.
• Maintain high standards for operational readiness, monitoring and improvements.
• Grow engineering culture, mentor engineers, participate in hiring and assessments.
• Collaborate on architecture, set principles, review designs across domains.
• Investigate performance and reliability issues and drive action plans.
• Promote AI-assisted development with guardrails and standards.

Skills

Backend engineering

Cloud-native design

TypeScript

Node.js

Azure

Event-driven architecture

AI-assisted development

Mentoring

Agile teams

Performance & reliability

Security

Data modelling

Tools

AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service)

Azure Functions

Terraform

Kubernetes

Docker

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

PostgreSQL

Azure Cosmos DB

Redis

Azure Blob Storage

Azure AI Search

API Management

Azure DevOps

GitHub Actions

Job description

Cazoo is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead backend and platform engineering efforts from a hands-on position. You will shape the technical roadmap for core platform capabilities, including data storage, enrichment and service delivery, while driving architecture decisions across Azure-based services and modernising legacy systems.

You will mentor engineers, contribute to hiring, and collaborate with product and commercial stakeholders to prioritise work.