Principal Platform Engineer

We are looking for a technical expert with deep data platform engineering experience, who thrives on solving complex problems, driving business impact, and coaching other engineers.

Salary: £75k – £100K

Reporting to: Shaun Howell, Tech Director

Location: primarily based in our London Office, with flexible and hybrid working (ideally three days per week in the office).

About us

At VivaCity, we make cities smarter, safer, and more sustainable. We have over 5,000 AI sensors around the world, gathering real-time anonymous data on transport modes, traffic flow, and travel patterns. This is used to gather actionable insights to support strategic decisions to improve the global transport network.

All our solutions are community-centric, using \’privacy by design\’ principles. Our ultimate goal is to make the European vision of a Smart City – one which makes the city work effectively, for the community.

We pride ourselves on a collaborative, open culture that fosters innovation, learning and encourages everyone to do their best work, whilst building a sense of community and collaboration. Read more about what it\’s like to work at VivaCity .

About the role

As a Principal Platform Engineer, you will report directly to the Director of Engineering, taking responsibility for designing, improving, and maintaining critical systems which transport hundreds of gigabytes per day and trillions of messages per year. A key focus of this role is ensuring the reliability, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness of our systems. Your work will be crucial in our mission to empower safe and sustainable transport around the world through data insights.

You will have primary accountability for our cloud data pipeline & underlying infrastructure, including Apache Kafka, Go microservices, a PostgreSQL database, Kubernetes, Vault, and other cloud services, as well as on-premise infrastructure. Your technical expertise will be instrumental in optimizing the performance, maintainability, and operational costs of these systems while ensuring they meet business needs.

In this role, you will collaborate closely with the Cloud and AI team, establish technical standards, lead architectural decision-making, and proactively share knowledge with colleagues. This role does not involve line management, but at VivaCity we view principal engineers as leaders, working alongside engineering managers. You will provide mentorship, technical guidance and training to engineers across the department.

About you

You are a technical expert with a proven ability to creatively solve complex problems across a broad remit, optimize systems for reliability and cost, and navigate ambiguity to deliver impactful solutions. You have a deep understanding of distributed systems, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure, and you thrive in an environment that values collaboration, continuous improvement, and technical excellence.

You proactively and effectively communicate with both technical and non-technical colleagues, earning trust and influence through your knowledge and proactive, considerate approach. You are passionate about simplifying complex systems and seek opportunities to balance immediate delivery with long-term improvements. You continue working on problems, even when you are not familiar with the problem space, and you know when and how to ask for help.

Requirements for the role

• Deep expertise in Apache Kafka (ideally Kafka Strimzi), including broker management, scaling, upgrades, and integration with high-throughput data pipelines.
• Strong experience designing, implementing and managing cloud infrastructure with a focus on reliability, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness (we use Kubernetes on Google Cloud Platform).
• Proficiency in Unix systems, ideally Linux (we use Ubuntu).
• Exceptional communication skills, with experience mentoring engineers and collaborating with stakeholders.
• Proven ability to resolve technical incidents in unfamiliar production systems.
• Technical and process documentation champion.
• Experience of operationally managing production software components, including observability, logging, metrics, error reporting, debugging, and live incident management.

Your time will be spent roughly as follows:

• 50% – Proactive technical work (e.g. changes to drive reliability, costs or customer value improvements)
• 30% – Reactive technical work (e.g. incident response, unblocking engineers, code review)
• 10% – Technical leadership initiatives (e.g. establishing technical standards, architectural principles, & staff training)
• 10% – Planning and administration

This is a unique opportunity to lead impactful technical initiatives, work with cutting-edge infrastructure, and help shape the future of our systems and engineering practices.

The following would further strengthen an application

• Proficiency with Hashicorp Vault including secret and role management.
• Proficiency with PostgreSQL (we use TimescaleDB), including query optimisation and SQL proficiency.
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages (we primarily use Go and TypeScript). Comfortable working with Infrastructure as Code, ideally Terraform.
• Familiarity with common DevOps tools and CI/CD processes.
• Proficiency with infrastructure management tools (e.g. Ansible, Chef, Puppet) Experience with internal developer platforms.
• Knowledge of information security principles, including identity and access management and authentication/authorisation processes.
• Experience in a start-up or scale-up environment.
• Passion for sustainability, transport or smart cities.

You don\’t need to have done all of these things before, but to excel in this role, you will need to be keen to learn and comfortable working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment. If you\’re close to what we\’re looking for, please consider applying. Experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way.

Hiring process

• 30 minute screening interview.
• 1.5 hour system design interview where you work together with a VivaCity engineer
• 2.5 hours final round interview, split into a 1 hour technical experience interview, 1 hour soft skills interview, and 30 minutes with Shaun, our Head of Engineering

We know that diverse ideas and perspectives drive innovation and make us better. We are creating an environment where everyone, from any background, can do their best work. We\’re an equal opportunities employer and all applications will receive consideration for employment without regard to ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, nationality, disability, age, or social background. If you need any reasonable accommodations to help you perform at your best during the application process, please let us know.

What we offer:

• 25 days of holiday
• Flexible working hours and work from home
• Up to 30 days per year work from abroad
• Up to 3 flexible bank holiday days
• 3% employer pension contribution
• £200 total working from home budget
• Enhanced parental leave
• Up to 3 ‘childcare’ or ‘dependant’ days per year
• Mental health support through Spill
• Discounted gym memberships through GymFlex
• £50 per person per quarter team social budget
• Additional entertainment budget and company parties
• Office food and drinks
• Optional Bupa healthcare and dental care through salary deduction
• Eye care vouchers
• Seasonal Flu jabs
• Cycle to work scheme
• Payroll giving through salary sacrifice

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