At a Glance
- Tasks: Write code and build resilient systems for high-demand ticket sales.
- Company: Join Ticketmaster, the world's largest live entertainment company.
- Benefits: Enjoy a competitive salary, remote work options, and career growth opportunities.
- Other info: Be part of an inclusive culture that values diversity and teamwork.
- Why this job: Make a real impact on live events while working with cutting-edge technology.
- Qualifications: Experience in software development, especially with distributed systems and Java.
The predicted salary is between 80000 - 100000 £ per year.
Job Summary:
Location: London, UK
Division: Ticketmaster UK Limited
Line Manager: VP Engineering, Accounts, Identity and Pre-Purchase
Contract Terms: Full-time permanent, 40h/per week
THE TEAM
The Prepurchase Platform group owns the backend services that power every fan's path to a ticket. We handle event discovery, real-time seat availability, and interactive venue experiences at massive scale, processing billions of API calls during peak on-sales. Our engineers build systems that must be fast, resilient, and available when it matters most.
THE JOB
As a Principal Engineer on the Prepurchase Platform team, you will write code, build systems, and solve hard problems hands-on. This is a systems thinking role: you will reason carefully about distributed systems trade-offs, understand why existing designs exist before proposing changes, and act on problems without waiting to be asked. You will lead platform modernization efforts, design event-driven architectures, and deliver systems that remain resilient during the highest-demand on-sales, working across multiple teams within the Prepurchase domain rather than within a single service area.
WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING
- Identify and act on production problems without being prompted.
- Build end-to-end, high-availability systems that handle extreme traffic spikes during high-demand on-sales without degradation.
- Lead platform modernization initiatives - migrating legacy services to cloud-native, microservice-based architectures.
- Design and implement streaming and event-driven solutions using Kafka/gRPC, enabling real-time data flow across services.
- Embed deeply in a specific service area when needed, or work horizontally across teams to solve cross-cutting problems.
- Champion resilience patterns: circuit breakers, graceful degradation, bulkheads, and auto-scaling strategies.
- Collaborate with the Enterprise Architecture team on architectural decisions and evolve engineering standards across the Prepurchase domain.
- Partner with product, security, and SRE teams to align technical decisions with business priorities.
- Drive observability improvements - ensuring services are instrumented for monitoring, alerting, and rapid incident response.
- Identify and eliminate single points of failure, improving system reliability and reducing on-call burden.
- Apply AI and machine learning tools to improve developer productivity, automate operational tasks, and enhance system capabilities.
- Evaluate and introduce new technologies that improve performance, reliability, or engineering velocity.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (or TECHNICAL SKILLS)
- Proven ability to reason about distributed systems trade-offs - scalability, consistency, availability, latency and make defensible design decisions under real constraints.
- Proven experience writing production code and building high-traffic systems at scale.
- Expertise in Java (17+) and the JVM, with strong command of JVM internals, garbage collection behaviour, and performance tuning under load. Kotlin is a plus.
- Hands-on experience with a reactive, non-blocking framework (Vert.x, Spring WebFlux, or equivalent) and asynchronous, event-driven service design.
- Deep experience with stream processing and event-driven architecture - Kafka Streams, Apache Flink, or equivalent.
- Strong command of gRPC (including streaming RPC) and binary serialization formats such as FlatBuffers, Avro, or Protobuf.
- Familiarity with Data-Oriented Design (DoD).
- Experience with compact, search-oriented data structures (e.g. RoaringBitmap, succinct/bitset representations).
- Experience with search engines (Elasticsearch, Solr) for discovery workloads is a plus.
- Strong grasp of microservice design, service mesh (Istio/Envoy), API contract evolution, and backend-for-frontend patterns.
- Hands-on experience with AWS (EKS) and cloud-native operations.
- Proficiency with caching strategies (Redis, CDN layer caching).
- Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI), and progressive deployment strategies.
- Experience designing for high availability - multi-region active-active/active-passive architectures.
- Proficiency with AI/ML tools and techniques.
- Familiarity with observability tooling: Grafana, Splunk, Prometheus, OpenTracing, or equivalent.
- Strong understanding of security best practices - OAuth/OIDC, input validation, secrets management.
- Track record of leading technical initiatives across multiple teams without direct authority.
YOU (BEHAVIOURAL SKILLS)
- Systems Thinking: Understands distributed systems as a set of trade-offs.
- Technical Vision: Anticipates platform challenges and designs systems that scale ahead of demand.
- Domain Depth: Invests in understanding systems fully before changing them.
- Ownership: Takes end-to-end responsibility for system health, performance, and reliability.
- Influence Without Authority: Drives architectural decisions through collaboration.
- Communication: Explains complex technical trade-offs clearly.
- Composure Under Pressure: Stays calm during high-severity incidents.
- Continuous Improvement: Identifies opportunities to modernize and strengthen systems.
LIFE AT TICKETMASTER
We are proud to be a part of Live Nation Entertainment, the world’s largest live entertainment company. Our vision at Ticketmaster is to connect people around the world to the live events they love. We do it all with an intense passion for Live and an inspiring and diverse culture driven by accessible leaders, attentive managers, and enthusiastic teams.
If you’re passionate about live entertainment like we are, and you want to work at a company dedicated to helping millions of fans experience it, we want to hear from you.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
We are passionate and committed to our people and go beyond the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion. You will be working in an inclusive environment and be encouraged to bring your whole self to work.
Principal Engineer I — Prepurchase Platform employer: SwiftCruit
At Global, we pride ourselves on being an exceptional employer, offering a dynamic work environment in the heart of London that fosters innovation and collaboration. As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you'll not only have the opportunity to influence millions through cutting-edge AI solutions but also benefit from a culture that encourages professional growth, cross-functional partnerships, and the development of reusable engineering standards. With a commitment to employee development and a focus on impactful projects, Global is the ideal place for those seeking meaningful and rewarding careers in data science and machine learning.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Principal Engineer I — Prepurchase Platform
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at SwiftCruit or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to SwiftCruit.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like SwiftCruit.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like SwiftCruit that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Principal Engineer I — Prepurchase Platform
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at SwiftCruit.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at SwiftCruit and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at SwiftCruit
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If SwiftCruit uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.
