Job Specifications
Job Description
Position Title: Principal Engineer, Platform & Applications
Position Description: Protingent Staffing has an exciting remote Direct Hire opportunity.
Job Responsibilities:
Define and own the multi-year technical architecture and standards for the entire Developer Platform ecosystem, ensuring resilience, performance, and scalability across all internal tools and infrastructure.
Own the architectural evolution and technical governance of the mission-critical Bazel build system and associated toolchains, ensuring optimized, reproducible, and hermetic builds for our core product.
Define the technical standards for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices and CI/CD pipeline governance (GitLab) for critical developer services, focusing on optimizing efficiency, uptime, and developer experience (DX).
Architect and lead the implementation of systems for measuring and improving engineering performance, utilizing established metrics frameworks (e.g., DORA, FLOW, SPACE).
Act as the technical decision-maker and expert consultant for complex architecture challenges within Platform Engineering and Enablement, ensuring alignment across technical roadmaps.
Champion and architect solutions that enforce technical standards, drive code quality, and automate governance across the entire developer lifecycle.
Elevate the organization's technical capability by providing expert-level consulting, conducting rigorous design reviews, and introducing advanced architectural patterns to all engineering teams within the Platform Group.
Job Qualifications:
12+ years of progressive experience in Software Engineering, with a significant focus on Platform Engineering, Developer Experience, or Build/Release Engineering.
5+ years acting as a Principal Engineer, Chief Architect, or equivalent Individual Contributor role, demonstrating the ability to set technical strategy and drive architectural initiatives across multiple functional teams.
Core Systems Mastery: Mandatory expert-level proficiency in advanced build systems (Bazel), complex CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI/GitHub Actions), and modern configuration/deployment technologies.
Platform & Tooling Architecture: Deep expertise in architecting, designing, and scaling complex internal developer platforms, including experience with Developer Portals (e.g., Backstage) and internal service-oriented applications built with Node.js/Go/Python.
Cloud & Systems Expertise: Strong knowledge of Cloud Architecture (AWS preferred), distributed systems design, SRE principles, and performance engineering.
Exceptional technical communication, negotiation, and influence skills with the ability to articulate and defend complex architectural concepts to both technical and executive audiences.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
Job Details:
Direct Hire
Location: Remote (sitting anywhere in the US)
Pay Rate Range: $175,000—$234,250
About Protingent: Protingent is an Award-Winning provider of top-tier Engineering and IT talent, trusted by companies at the forefront of innovation — from Software and Aerospace to AI, Clean Tech, Medical Devices, and Connected Technologies. We’re passionate about making a positive impact by connecting exceptional talent with meaningful opportunities and helping our clients build the future.
About the Company
Protingent is a technical staffing firm specializing in providing IT and engineering professionals for all areas of product design, development and test. We place high-caliber engineers with many of the leading technology companies in the U.S. We were founded in 2001 by an engineer and have always been dedicated to providing the right engineers who possess a high level of skill and knowledge regarding the technologies required to drive our clients' success.
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