Senior Principal Platform Lead || AI & Agentic Systems

We have a platform that can do more than our developers are getting out of it. The gap isnt capability its the experience. Too much tribal knowledge too many tickets to get things done too much cognitive load between I want to build something and its running in production.

As Senior Principal Platform Lead Platform DX you close that gap. You will set the strategy own the Internal Developer Platform define golden paths and drive adoption across NGA and IFS product teams serving as the voice of the developer inside the platform organisation. You combine architectural thinking with hands-on delivery and you understand that the best developer platforms are the ones developers actually want to use. This is not a management role but you will lead without authority across a large distributed engineering organisation.

• Own the IDP vision roadmap and end-to-end execution at IFS service catalogue self-service scaffolding golden paths CI/CD integration and developer portals
• Own the developer experience vision for the Nexus platform from service creation through to production observability
• Work across Kairos Nexus Auth Base Tech and product teams to deliver cohesive integrated developer experiences
• Define platform standards that make the right way the easy way not mandated just obviously better
• Drive measurable adoption: onboarding time self-service completion rates platform NPS time-to-first-deployment DORA metrics
• Integrate authentication and authorisation services into the IDP self-service model
• Work directly with NGA product teams and IFS R&D domain teams to understand where theyre struggling and prioritise what to fix
• Partner with IAM infrastructure and SRE teams to ensure the developer-facing surface of the platform is coherent reliable and secure
• Establish feedback loops developer surveys usage analytics office hours and act on them relentlessly
• Influence platform strategy at the architectural level and represent the developer platform in technical leadership forums
• Mentor and technically guide Principal and Senior platform engineers raising the bar on what good DX looks like at IFS

Qualifications :

• You have 8 years in platform infrastructure or developer-tooling engineering with at least 3 years in a senior/staff IC or technical lead role. This is a platform engineering role: deep infrastructure and operational experience is essential not a nice-to-have.
• Youve owned an IDP or developer portal end-to-end (Backstage Port Cortex or equivalent) including the grind of keeping it adopted and maintained
• Youve brought developer platforms into production at enterprise scale and you know why adoption fails even when the technology is right
• You have genuine hands-on infrastructure depth: Kubernetes GitOps Infrastructure as Code (Terraform / Crossplane) CI/CD pipelines secrets management and observability you can go deep not just direct
• Youve shipped golden paths service templates and CI/CD standardisation at scale
• You think about your internal developers as customers not consumers youve run surveys tracked metrics and made hard prioritisation calls based on that data
• You know when the bottleneck is a process not a pipeline
• Youre comfortable in the NGA stack or can get there fast: Go (backend) React / (frontend) Kafka / RedPanda (event-driven) PostgreSQL running on Kubernetes (AKS)
• You communicate clearly with engineering leaders and product directors this role shapes platform strategy not just implements it
• Youve worked in a large distributed engineering organisation and understand how to build platform trust

Additional Information :

We embrace flexibility and hybrid work opportunities to support diverse needs and lifestyles while also valuing inclusive workplace experiences. By fostering a sense of community we drive innovation strengthen connections and nurture belonging. Our commitment ensures you can work in a way that suits you best while also engaging with colleagues to share ideas and build meaningful relationships.

Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time