Principal Software Engineer, Platform Lead

About the Job

The UXE Platform team's mission is to provide core platforms, golden paths, operational integrity, and AI acceleration essential for creating and operating exceptional digital experiences across the product portfolio. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in achieving this mission by discovering and executing on AI tooling capabilities, helping to guide tactical decisions and drive strategic initiatives 

This role demands significant discovery work for complex efforts, translating strategic AI and platform objectives into actionable technical plans, and ensuring effective delegation and execution You will be instrumental in fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth through mentorship and training of peers, and you will facilitate collaboration by actively participating guilds and in team synchronization meetings. Your expertise will ensure the reliability, performance, and scalability of our core platform systems while actively contributing to the acceleration of AI integration within the organization
 

What You Will Do

• Technical Advisement & Strategic Guidance: Provide expert technical leadership and advisement to the Director and broader leadership, offering critical insights to guide tactical decisions and ensure technical alignment with overall UXE Platform engineering objectives through the strategic integration and development of AI-powered solutions

• Technical Discovery & Delegation: Lead and conduct in-depth technical discovery and analysis for complex platform initiatives, including AI enablement efforts (e.g., architectural discovery for services like the Customer Portal or Data Lake). Translate high-level strategic goals into concrete technical requirements, propose robust solutions, and effectively delegate implementation tasks to team members

• Skill Development: Act as a lead mentor and coach for software engineers, fostering a culture of continuous learning, professional development, and the adoption of cutting-edge best practices within the team and across the organization. This involves offering guidance on career growth and readiness for opportunities

• Operational Excellence & Reliability: Drive initiatives to improve operational efficiency, system reliability, and performance  by designing and implementing AI-powered solutions and automation within our core platform software

• AI Platform Enablement: Contribute to the strategic enhancement of our core platforms with AI capabilities, supporting the integration and operationalization of AI/ML models, tools, and frameworks to accelerate AI adoption within UXE. This includes ensuring secure, compliant, and scalable AI component deployment, such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers with required CMDB Appcodes and robust authentication/authorization

• Automation & Incident Management: Lead incident response efforts, conduct thorough root cause analysis, and identify opportunities to automate manual tasks and processes, thereby improving system stability, reducing errors, and minimizing operational toil

What You Will Bring

• Experience: 13+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, with a strong focus on platform engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or related infrastructure-focused roles

• Leadership: Proven experience in a technical leadership role, demonstrating the ability to guide teams, provide technical direction, and influence architectural decisions

• Cloud & Container Platforms: Deep understanding and extensive hands-on experience with major cloud platforms, specifically AWS and Openshift, including operational experience from both tactical and strategic viewpoints

• Programming Proficiency: Strong proficiency in multiple programming languages. Experience with Python, NodeJS, and/or PHP is a significant plus.

• Web Application & Request Stack Expertise: Extensive full-stack web application development experience and a clear understanding of the request stack, including caching headers, HTTP verbs, and common errors.

• Operational Tooling: Strong knowledge of monitoring and alerting tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog) and experience with configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, Chef)

• Problem-Solving & Analytical Skills: Exceptional problem-solving, troubleshooting, and analytical skills, with a proven ability to navigate and resolve complex technical challenges in production environments