Summary
Lead the architecture and long-term evolution of an internal developer platform while remaining deeply hands-on. You will create self-service infrastructure and deployment capabilities, establish reliable engineering standards, build reusable platform services in Go, and operate scalable Kubernetes environments supporting cloud-native services.
Highlights
High-impact principal individual-contributor role with organization-wide technical influence, platform strategy ownership, and hands-on work building scalable developer capabilities.
Description
Principal Platform Engineer
Berlin, Germany — Hybrid
AI SaaS | Internal Developer Platforms | Platform Engineering
Our client, a fast-growing AI SaaS company based in Berlin, is looking for a Principal Platform Engineer to define and evolve the internal developer platform powering its next stage of growth.
This is a senior individual-contributor role for someone who can combine hands-on engineering with organisation-wide technical influence.
You’ll shape platform architecture, establish reliable golden paths, and help product teams deliver cloud-native AI services with greater speed, security, and confidence.
What You’ll Be Working On
• Defining the architecture and long-term strategy for the company’s internal developer platform
• Building self-service capabilities for infrastructure provisioning, deployments, observability, and service ownership
• Designing reusable platform services and engineering tooling in Go
• Operating scalable Kubernetes environments supporting customer-facing AI products
• Establishing secure and repeatable cloud infrastructure patterns using Terraform and AWS
• Developing golden paths that reduce cognitive load and improve developer productivity
• Evolving the Backstage developer portal, service catalogue, templates, and platform integrations
• Improving platform reliability, security, observability, and cost efficiency
• Leading technical design reviews and influencing architecture across multiple engineering teams
• Mentoring senior engineers and raising platform-engineering standards throughout the organisation
Experience Required
• 8+ years of experience in Platform Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps, or related roles
• Deep production experience with Kubernetes and cloud-native distributed systems
• Strong AWS architecture and operations experience
• Advanced Terraform and Infrastructure as Code expertise
• Commercial experience building services, automation, or infrastructure tooling in Go
• Experience designing internal developer platforms or self-service infrastructure for multiple product teams
• Proven ability to lead complex technical initiatives without relying on line-management authority
• Strong understanding of networking, security, observability, reliability, and software-delivery practices
Nice to Have
• Hands-on experience with Backstage and its plugin ecosystem
• GitOps experience with Argo CD or Flux
• Experience supporting AI, machine-learning, or GPU-based workloads
• Knowledge of Kubernetes operators, service meshes, or policy-as-code tooling
• OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, or comparable observability experience
• Previous Staff or Principal-level experience within an AI SaaS, Developer Tools, or cloud-platform company
