Platform Consultant Expert - (Hybrid) in Belfast

At Allstate, great things happen when our people work together to protect families and their belongings from life's uncertainties. For more than 90 years, our innovative drive has kept us a step ahead of our customers' evolving needs.

This role sits within Allstate Cyber Operations & Platforms as part of a set of Digital Product Teams responsible for building and operating a cohesive, scalable Security Operations platform ecosystem. This ecosystem spans:

• Agentic Cyber Platforms (ACP): Operationalizing AI as a core cyber capability through shared platforms, orchestration patterns, and governance-by-design.
• Security Data & Observability (SD&O): Engineering and managing the Security Operations Data Plane, enabling high-fidelity telemetry, analytics, and AI-ready data.
• Tooling & Platform (T&P): Ensuring security tooling is integrated, governed, and aligned as part of a unified platform rather than disconnected solutions.

Together, these capabilities enable secure, scalable, and intelligence-driven cyber operations by design. The Platform Consultant defines and drives architecture patterns, integration standards, and ecosystem strategy across AI platforms, security data, and tooling. This role ensures the environment evolves as a coherent, reusable, and governed platform ecosystem, enabling safe, scalable adoption through well-defined "paved roads." You will translate operational intent into enterprise-scale platform design, ensuring interoperability between AI systems, data platforms, and tooling while minimizing fragmentation and maximizing reuse.

Key Responsibilities

• Platform Architecture & Standards: Define architecture, design patterns, and integration standards across AI, data, and tooling. Establish APIs, data models, security controls, and observability requirements.
• Data & AI Enablement: Ensure high-quality, structured data for AI (lineage, consistency, readiness). Set standards for safe AI use (explainability, auditability, controlled actions).
• Tooling & Integration: Design unified integration across tools and platforms. Ensure tools produce consistent, high-quality, AI-ready data.
• Paved Roads & Adoption: Build scalable, reusable solutions as the default ("paved roads"). Drive standardization, reduce duplication, and guide adoption.
• Strategy & Decision-Making: Lead build vs. buy vs. integrate decisions. Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, and governance-driven.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner across teams (ACP, SD&O, T&P) for platform alignment. Influence teams to drive simplification, reuse, and consistency.

Essential Criteria

• A minimum of 5 years software engineering experience in at least 3 programming paradigms to include:
• Object-oriented (Java & Javascript required and at least one other language)
• Procedural / systems (e.g. Go, Rust, C)
• Functional (e.g. F#, Elixir, Clojure, Haskell)
• Experience using modern development tools (e.g., IntelliJ or VS Code, Git/GitHub, Spring Boot) and designing robust RESTful APIs.
• A minimum of 3 years hands-on expertise in architecting and delivering large scale distributed systems, such as cloud native microservices on Docker/Kubernetes, deployed on modern cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or equivalent), ensuring scalability, high availability, and performance.
• Demonstrated success as a high impact technical advisor to multiple engineering teams, with proven ability to influence architecture direction and mentor engineers in best practices with proven leadership responsibilities.
• Expert level knowledge of Agile/XP and DevOps methodologies, including paired programming, test driven development (TDD), and CI/CD automation, with a track record of using these practices to accelerate delivery and improve quality.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience with agentic AI platforms, governance, and safe-action design.
• Familiarity with security operations ecosystems and analyst workflows.
• Experience with:
• Telemetry and observability systems.
• Data lineage, metadata, and data quality frameworks.
• Canonical data models and analytics-ready datasets.
• Background in tooling integration and platform standardization (golden paths/paved roads).
• Experience aligning AI, data, and tooling strategies into a unified platform vision.

Supervisory Responsibilities

This job does not have supervisory duties.

Skills: Architectural Patterns, Cloud Platform, DevOps, Ecosystems, Microservices Architecture.

Why join us? Allstate NI is proud to be Allstate's European Digital Centre of Excellence, a hub for innovation and engineering excellence. We're recent winners of Best Place to Work in IT (100 employees) and Best Use of Cloud Services at the Belfast Telegraph IT Awards, and we've been recognised for our community and sustainability impact with Platinum in the Northern Ireland Environmental Benchmarking Survey. We're a product-driven, cloud-first organisation delivering real outcomes through modern technology, a digital product-centric talent model, and a culture rooted in engineering excellence. Our teams work in cross-functional structures, guided by an outcome-based delivery approach that accelerates speed, agility, and value.

We also invest in you. At Allstate NI, your career growth matters. You'll have access to our Continuous Learning Hub, designed to support skills development and professional advancement through tailored learning paths, certifications, and mentoring opportunities. Whether you're deepening technical expertise or exploring leadership roles, we provide the tools and support to help you thrive.

What do you get in return? As well as receiving a competitive annual salary, our reward package includes:

• Corporate bonus scheme
• Pension scheme
• Annual performance-related pay reviews
• Life assurance and income protection
• Flexible working options
• Hybrid working
• Private medical and dental insurance
• Access to an employee assistance programme
• Discounted gym membership
• Two paid volunteering days each year
• Cycle to work scheme

Be part of a high-performing, socially responsible organisation where your work has purpose, and your growth is supported every step of the way.