Principal Platform Engineer

Powering the worlds payments ecosystem

ACI powers the payments ecosystem globally and you power ACI. Youll innovate collaborate and grow in an energetic technology culture with decades of proven success. ACIers in all roles and levels are truly your colleagues and many are your friends. Our size and reach allow you to see the global impact of your work. You are visible your talents are valued and you are empowered to shape the future of payments.

About the Role

The Principal Platform Engineer is a senior individual contributor and technical leader responsible for shaping scaling and governing ACIs internal platforms as products not projects. This role operates at the intersection of architecture developer experience cloud platforms DevSecOps and organizational enablement.

You will define paved roads and golden paths that enable product and delivery teams to move faster with confidencewhile operating within clearly defined security compliance and financial guardrails. You will also act as a technical multiplier mentoring senior engineers influencing architectural direction and ensuring platform capabilities are designed for scale reliability and innersourcing.

Key Responsibilities

Platform Architecture & Technical Leadership

• Serve as a technical authority for platform architecture across buildtime and runtime domains (CI/CD Kubernetes/OpenShift cloud infrastructure secrets observability and delivery tooling).
• Define and evolve reference architectures platform standards and design guardrails aligned with enterprise security compliance and FinOps expectations.
• Lead architectural design reviews and proactively guide teams away from bespoke or nonscalable solutions.
• Drive cloudagnostic and hybrid designs supporting customermanaged SaaS and onprem deployments.

Platform as a Product

• Treat platform capabilities as products with roadmaps clear ownership success metrics and adoption goals.
• Design and maintain golden paths for common developer workflows (build test deploy operate).
• Partner with Product Client Delivery and Engineering teams to reduce cognitive load and delivery friction.
• Ensure platforms are selfservice automated and documented minimizing ticketdriven workflows.

DevSecOps & Automation

• Lead adoption of everythingascode practices (IaC policyascode pipelines configuration).
• Embed security quality and compliance early (shiftleft) into platform workflows.
• Influence CI/CD standards testing frameworks artifact management and release automation.
• Drive consistency across GitHub pipelines branching and SDLC tooling.

Cloud Kubernetes & Runtime Platforms

• Provide deep expertise in Kubernetes and OpenShift including multiarch multicloud and customermanaged environments.
• Guide platform support for AWS Azure GCP and Red Hat OpenShift with a consistent operating model.
• Define Day0 Day1 and Day2 operational tooling (installers upgrades health checks DR secrets rotation).

Mentorship & InnerSourcing

• Act as a mentor and technical coach for senior and stafflevel engineers.
• Set expectations for highquality design documentation ADRs and knowledge sharing.
• Promote and enable innersourcing making it easy for product teams to contribute back to the platform.
• Be accountable for onboarding success of new engineers through guidance and technical stewardship.

AIAssisted Engineering & Innovation

• Champion AIassisted engineering practices embedded into everyday workflows (testing reviews documentation insights).
• Help define guardrails for responsible AI usage within platform engineering.
• Explore and prototype AIenabled platform capabilities that improve developer productivity and platform reliability.

Required Qualifications

• 12 years of experience in software engineering devops cloud or platform engineering roles.
• Deep handson expertise with:
  • Kubernetes and/or OpenShift
  • CI/CD systems and SDLC tooling
  • Infrastructure as Code (Terraform ARM CloudFormation etc.)
  • Cloud platforms (AWS Azure GCP)
• Proven ability to influence architecture without formal authority.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain complex topics to diverse audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience operating platforms at enterprise scale with strong governance requirements.
• Background in customermanaged or regulated environments.
• Experience defining or operating an Internal Developer Platform (IDP).
• Familiarity with DevSecOps tooling policyascode and FinOps practices.
• Experience contributing to or leading innersource initiatives.

What Success Looks Like

• Platform capabilities are adopted because they are the easiest and safest path not because they are mandated.
• Product teams ship faster with fewer escalations and less manual intervention.
• Architecture decisions scale across teams and environments without constant rework.
• Engineers view the platform as a career accelerator not a constraint.

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United Stateson a full-time basis. This position does not offer sponsorship for employment visa status or work permit now or in the future.

In return for your expertise we offer opportunities for growth career development and a competitive compensation and benefits packageall within an innovative and collaborative work environment.

Are you ready to help us transform the payments ecosystem To learn more about ACI Worldwide visit our web site atJob ID (Requisition #19247)

ACI Worldwide is an AA/EEO employer in the United States which includes providing equal opportunity for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities and an EEO employer globally.

Important Notice About Recruitment Scams
Job seekers should be aware of ongoing recruitment scams where individuals or organizations impersonate legitimate companies to offer fake job opportunities. These scams often involve requests for personal information payments or interviews through unofficial channels. Please be cautious and verify any communications claiming to be from our company ( / @). The ACI Worldwide recruitment team will always follow official channels and will never request payment.

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