Principal Engineer (Platforms)

Job Purpose

As Principal Engineer within RWS’s newly formed Platform Engineering organisation, you will play a critical role in designing and evolving our enterprise integration and data platforms that underpin trusted, secure, and resilient products at scale. Operating in a complex enterprise environment, you will provide hands-on technical leadership across integration, data movement, and service enablement, shaping build-and-buy strategies that balance commercial platforms (such as MuleSoft) with bespoke services, primarily built in modern Java-based stacks. You will set technical direction, define pragmatic enterprise architecture patterns, and drive automation and platform thinking to enable teams to deliver faster and more safely. With a strong interest in AI, automation, and emerging platform capabilities, you will help explore how technologies such as LLMs and intelligent workflows can enhance integration, data quality, and operational efficiency. Just as importantly, you will coach engineers and influence senior stakeholders, raising engineering standards and helping the organisation solve complex, scaled enterprise challenges through well-designed platforms.

 

About Product & Technology

 

Product & Technology plays a pivotal role in aligning the organization with its strategic objectives and enhancing shareholder value. Product & Technology is responsible for establishing unified standards and governance practices throughout the company. Additionally, we oversee the development and maintenance of core applications essential for the seamless operation of various functions across the organization. We are committed to driving and executing future roadmaps that are in line with the overall strategic direction of RWS. 

 

With a global reach, Product & Technology provides support services to over 7500 end users worldwide. We take pride in managing the information security operation and safeguarding all our assets. Our core functions encompass Enterprise & Technical Architecture, Network & Voice, Infrastructure, Service Delivery, Service Operations, Data & Analytics, Security & Quality Compliance, Transformation, Application Development, Enterprise Platforms, With a dedicated team of over 500 staff, Product & Technology ensures a strong presence across all regions, enabling efficient and effective support to our global operations.

Job Overview

Key Responsibilities

 

• Provide hands-on technical leadership in the design, build and evolution of enterprise-scale integration and data platforms supporting critical business and customer systems.
• Define and own integration, API and data architecture patterns and standards, ensuring secure, reliable and scalable service enablement across the organisation.
• Lead pragmatic build-vs-buy decisions, combining commercial platforms (e.g. MuleSoft) with custom-built, Java-based services and cloud-native technologies.
• Drive modern platform engineering practices, including automation, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code and self-service capabilities that accelerate delivery teams.
• Partner with product, security, data and delivery leaders to ensure platforms meet enterprise requirements for compliance, resilience, observability and performance.
• Champion engineering excellence through high-quality code, testing strategies, and robust non-functional design.
• Explore and apply emerging technologies such as AI, LLMs and intelligent automation to enhance integration, data quality and operational efficiency.
• Mentor engineers and influence senior stakeholders, raising technical capability and shaping RWS’s modern enterprise architecture.

 

Skills & Experience

 

• Proven experience as a senior/principal engineer designing and delivering enterprise-scale integration and data platforms in complex environments.
• Strong background in modern software engineering, with hands-on experience building services using Java and related ecosystems.
• Experience working with enterprise integration platforms such as MuleSoft (or equivalent), including API-led connectivity and service orchestration patterns.
• Solid understanding of cloud-native architectures, with practical experience on AWS and/or GCP, including managed services, networking and security fundamentals.
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems with strong non-functional characteristics (scalability, resilience, performance and observability).
• Ability to make pragmatic build vs buy decisions and apply modern enterprise architecture principles in a delivery-focused way.
• Familiarity with automation and platform engineering practices, including CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code and developer