Principal Platform Engineer

Description

The company builds an AI-powered product network for trade, used by governments and businesses to keep trade flowing and the global economy more resilient and secure.

This is a senior individual contributor role and the top technical authority for the platform the company's products run on. You report to the Senior Director of Platform Engineering. You will set architecture across organizational lines, not just within one team's backlog.

The estate spans multi-cloud infrastructure on AWS and Azure, a multi-tenant commercial platform, accredited environments including FedRAMP and IRAP, and dedicated sovereign deployments for national customers. The architecture behind all of this sets how fast product teams ship, how quickly new customers go live, and what infrastructure costs.

You will sit on the Platform Engineering leadership team alongside the engineering managers. Engineers across the company will bring you technical questions that span more than one team.

The role comes with real freedom to choose which high-impact problems to pursue.

Responsibilities

• Make technical decisions and architecture calls across several organizations, not only inside Platform Engineering. Shape company-wide design in existing forums and start new ones where none exist.
• Own the reference architecture for AWS and Azure across commercial, regulated, and sovereign environments, and define the patterns teams build against.
• Turn company strategy into technical strategy for the area. Keep it tied to customer and product outcomes, and lay out options and tradeoffs for leadership so they can decide with a clear view of consequences.
• Lead architecture for cross-cutting concerns: ingress and API gateway, authentication and authorization, SSO and RBAC, service-to-service communication, and the conventions that govern them.
• Design a repeatable provisioning path for new regions, accredited environments, and customer tenants, with a known shape and timeline.
• Set standards for infrastructure as code, GitOps, Kubernetes configuration, and release engineering across the estate, including where AI-assisted development tools fit in platform work. Drive adoption through RFCs, design reviews, and reference implementations rather than mandates.
• Run the forums that align senior engineers, including design review, and set the cadence that keeps a broad view of delivery and quality across the area.
• Work with product, implementation, and finance partners to validate approaches, estimate costs, and weigh implementation options before commitments are made.
• Write and prototype the difficult parts yourself, including greenfield components and proofs of concept that reduce risk before a team commits.
• Work with Security and Compliance so accreditation requirements are built into the platform rather than handled separately for each environment.
• Mentor, pair with, and review the work of engineers around you, and raise the bar toward staff and principal level work.
• Interview candidates at senior and leadership levels, and represent the company's technical work with customers, partners, and the industry.

Requirements

• At least 10 years building and operating cloud infrastructure and platforms, including time as the recognized technical authority for a platform other teams relied on.
• Background in SRE or platform engineering, with real ownership of systems other engineers built on.
• Production experience running AWS and/or Azure environments at multi-account, multi-environment scale.
• Strong infrastructure as code skills in Terraform, OpenTofu, or similar tools.
• Deep Kubernetes experience, including cluster management, multi-cluster operations, and the platform abstractions built on it.
• Use GitOps as your deployment model, with hands-on production experience running ArgoCD, Flux, or equivalent.
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development and agentic coding tools, and a considered view of where they belong in engineering workflows and where they do not.
• Working knowledge of how regulatory and accreditation constraints shape architecture, including environments where continuous delivery does not apply.
• Programming ability in Python, Go, or a similar language. You still write code and want to keep doing so.
• A track record of architecture adopted by teams you did not own, earned through influence rather than authority.
• A long-term view, with the ability to connect a technical decision to its effect on cost, delivery, and the product.
• Excellent written communication. Design docs and RFCs are how this role scales.
• Self-directed, with good judgment about which problems deserve your time.
• BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent experience.

Conditions

Fully remote within the United States, or based in the Brooklyn, NY or Washington, DC hub, with hybrid flexibility.

Base salary range: $250,000 to $295,000 per year. Final pay depends on factors such as experience, education, critical skills, and business needs.

Competitive equity grants are included in most full-time offers and count toward total compensation. The role also includes either a discretionary bonus or a variable compensation plan.

The recruiter assigned to this role can share more detail on pay and benefits during hiring.

Offers come from an the company's site email address. The company will never ask for payment during interviews or onboarding.

Benefits

• Flexible time off with no fixed allowance, so you manage your own time away from work.
• Paid parental leave: 14 weeks for non-birthing, adoptive, and foster parents, and up to 26 weeks for birthing parents, paid at 100% of base salary.
• Medical, vision, and dental coverage with generous employer contributions. The high deductible health plan is fully paid by the employer for employees, with an added employer contribution to a Health Savings Account. A Flexible Spending Account is also available.
• Life, short- and long-term disability, and AD&D insurance at no cost to you.
• 401(k) retirement savings through Guideline.
• Pre-tax commuter benefits for public transit or parking.
• Free premium subscription to Calm for meditation, sleep, and mindfulness.
• Pet insurance through Wishbone, plus a Total Pet vet service and telehealth discount plan.
• Free confidential personal support through an Employee Assistance Program.
• Dependent Care FSA for pre-tax childcare savings.