Principal Engineer, Application Platforms – Head of Engineering

The CTO Platform Engineering & Architecture (CTOp) organisation, within the Chief Technology Office (CTO), builds next-gen application and AI platforms focused on reducing operational overhead through integrated controls and open-source solutions. CTOp sets architecture and engineering standards, builds core application, developer and AI platforms, and automates controls to enable fast, safe, and reliable software delivery.

• Significant senior engineering leadership experience in platform engineering and/or large-scale application hosting environments.
• Proven track record delivering complex technology change across multiple teams, including platform consolidation and migration programmes.
• Strong experience establishing governance, prioritisation, and delivery management practices in an engineering-led environment.
• Ability to define and embed engineering standards with measurable outcomes such as reliability, quality, and delivery performance.
• Strong understanding of resilience engineering, operational risk management, and controls within enterprise technology environments.
• Strong knowledge of observability practices and operating models including monitoring, logging, alerting, SLOs/SLAs, and incident management.
• Experience implementing automation for operational controls such as automated runbooks, policy-as-code, and standardised controls.
• Ability to drive standardisation through consistent engineering patterns and reusable platform capabilities.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills across senior technology leadership and delivery partners.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, able to translate strategy into executable plans and clear outcomes.
• Demonstrated leadership behaviors that build inclusive, high-performing teams with clear accountability and focus on delivery outcome.
• Hands-on capability as a Principal Engineer, including delivering code to production.

• Leading the engineering function for Application Platform Engineering, covering strategic direction and day-to-day execution.
• Supporting the Head of Application Platforms with end-to-end ownership of delivery, controls, and outcomes across the team.
• Establishing and operating effective governance, including prioritisation, delivery cadence, and decision-making forums.
• Defining, implementing, and tracking measurable engineering standards to improve quality, reliability, and consistency.
• Driving the migration strategy and execution to achieve ~80% application migration onto the standard platform.
• Leading the consolidation of six hosting platforms into a standard platform to reduce complexity and operational risk.
• Improving platform resilience and time-to-market through standard patterns, reusable capabilities, and streamlined delivery.
• Ensuring consistent observability practices (monitoring, logging, alerting) across the platform and migrated applications.
• Implementing automated run controls to strengthen operational management and reduce manual intervention.
• Managing delivery and control outcomes, ensuring transparency through metrics, reporting, and continuous improvement.
• Partnering with stakeholders across technology and delivery to align priorities, manage dependencies, and remove blockers.