Senior Principal Platform Lead || AI & Agentic Systems

Overview

In this role you own and deliver the Internal Developer Platform (IDP) to accelerate how engineers build and run production software. You set the strategy, define golden paths, and drive adoption across NGA and IFS product teams while delivering a cohesive, self-service experience. You combine architectural thinking with hands-on delivery to ensure developers actually want to use the platform. This is a greenfield build for a high-impact, enterprise-scale AI-enabled platform.

Pay / Benefits

• hybrid work opportunities
• inclusive and diverse workplace
• global impact and collaboration
• focus on innovation and sustainability
• opportunity to lead at enterprise scale

Responsibilities

• Own the IDP vision, roadmap, and end-to-end execution including service catalogue, self-service scaffolding, golden paths, CI/CD integration, and developer portals
• Own the Nexus platform developer experience from service creation to production observability
• Collaborate across Kairos, Nexus, Auth, Base Tech, and product teams to deliver cohesive developer experiences
• Define platform standards that make the right way the easy way
• Drive adoption metrics (onboarding time, self-service completion, platform NPS, time-to-first-deployment, DORA metrics)
• Integrate authentication and authorization services into the IDP self-service model
• Engage with NGA product teams and IFS R&D to prioritize fixes based on user feedback
• Partner with IAM, infrastructure, and SRE to ensure a coherent, reliable, and secure surface
• Establish feedback loops, developer surveys, usage analytics, and office hours; act relentlessly on insights
• 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 to raise DX quality

Key requirements

• 8+ years in platform, infrastructure, or developer-tooling engineering
• 3+ years in a senior/staff IC or technical lead role
• hands-on production experience with Kubernetes, GitOps, IaC (Terraform / Crossplane), CI/CD pipelines, secrets management, and observability
• owned an IDP or developer portal end-to-end (Backstage, Port, Cortex, or equivalent)
• produced production-grade developer platforms at enterprise scale and driven adoption
• shipped golden paths and CI/CD standardisation at scale
• customer-centric view of internal developers with surveys and metrics driving prioritisation
• proficient in NGA stack or capable to ramp quickly: Go, React/Next.js, Kafka/RedPanda, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes (AKS)
• strong communication with engineering leaders and product directors
• experience in large, distributed engineering organisations to build platform trust

• clear and persuasive communicator
• collaborative and influencing without authority
• customer-centric mindset
• Kubernetes (production)
• GitOps
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Crossplane)

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