Principal Engineer – Data Platforms & Architecture
Principal Engineer – Data Platforms & Architecture
Location: London or Amsterdam (Hybrid – 3 days office / 2 days remote)
Reporting to: Director of Engineering
About the Role
We are looking for a highly accomplished Principal Engineer to join the leadership team of a large-scale Data Platform organisation. This is a senior individual contributor role with broad technical influence across strategy, architecture, and execution.
You will act as the top technical authority for the data platform, partnering closely with engineering leadership to define long-term technical direction while remaining hands-on with the most complex and business-critical challenges.
This role shapes how 50+ engineers design, build, and operate scalable, reliable, and high-performance data systems, enabling analytics, streaming, governance, and machine learning at scale.
What You’ll Be Responsible For
- Define and own the long-term technical vision and roadmap for a modern data platform, spanning:
- Data warehousing
- Data lake and table formats
- Streaming and real-time processing
- Governance, quality, and observability tooling
- Design, document, and govern reference architectures for core data infrastructure, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security.
- Act as a hands-on technical leader, contributing directly to the most complex architectural and engineering problems.
- Set and uphold technical standards for code quality, observability, security, and Infrastructure-as-Code across all data platform teams.
- Mentor and coach Senior and Staff Engineers, raising the technical bar across the organisation.
- Apply platform engineering principles to improve developer experience, delivery velocity, and operational efficiency.
- Lead the evaluation, prototyping, and adoption of new data technologies, balancing innovation with pragmatism.
- Influence engineering, product, and executive stakeholders through clear technical reasoning and strong communication.
What You’ll Bring
- Extensive experience in software and data engineering, operating at Principal, Staff, or equivalent level.
- Deep expertise across the modern data stack, such as:
- Cloud data warehouses and lakehouse technologies
- Streaming and real-time processing systems
- Data governance and platform tooling
- Proven success designing scalable, self-service data platforms using cloud-native services (AWS and/or GCP).
- Strong experience with infrastructure automation and Infrastructure-as-Code (e.g. Terraform, configuration management).
- Expert-level programming skills in Python, Scala, or Go, with experience in data orchestration and transformation frameworks.
- Exceptional ability to turn complex requirements into simple, maintainable architectural designs.
- Strong communication and influence skills across technical and non-technical audiences.
- A results-oriented mindset with the ability to thrive in fast-paced, high-growth environments.
Nice to Have
- Experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
- Familiarity with data governance, lineage, and observability tooling.
- Understanding of MLOps and how data platforms support the full machine learning lifecycle.
Why Join
You’ll work in a highly technical, international environment where Principal Engineers shape the direction of platforms used at global scale. The culture values technical excellence, ownership, and continuous learning, while fostering inclusion and diverse perspectives.
This is a rare opportunity to combine deep technical impact, strategic influence, and hands-on engineering in a true Principal-level role.