Principal Platform Engineer

About the Role:

The Principal Platform Engineer defines the scope of technical work, owns the architectural direction of complex Platform workstreams, and is accountable for the technical outcomes of the engagement. 

You are responsible for code quality, architecture, and technical direction across your team — and you're the person who makes sure what gets built is the right thing, built the right way.

You make the hard architecture calls, document the tradeoffs, and communicate them in a way that builds trust with the engineers executing the work and the technical leaders sponsoring it.

 

What You'll Do:

Technical Ownership and Architecture

• Define the scope of technical work related to deliverables and milestones of the engagement

• Own the architectural direction of your Platform workstream — CI/CD pipeline design, IaC architecture, platform strategy, observability programs, DevSecOps implementation, AI tooling and implementation, and developer experience

• Responsible for code quality, architecture, and technical direction across the team

• Build and own complex delivery infrastructure — pipelines teams depend on, IaC systems that don't drift, and cloud-native platform environments that work for teams who aren't infrastructure specialists

• Drive observability maturity — implementing metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting strategies that change how teams operate

• Build platform engineering initiatives within your workstream — developer platforms, self-service tooling, automated governance, policy as code

• Integrate AI and LLM capabilities into client delivery pipelines and developer workflows in ways that are architecturally sound and maintainable

• Anticipate technical risk before it becomes delivery risk — surface issues early and communicate proactively

• Participate in scoping discussions and SOW architecture for new and existing customers

• Lead or participate in Platform Dojo engagements, coaching client teams on modern delivery practices

• Generate ideas, be willing to fail fast, and demonstrate with POCs

 

Client Technical Engagement

• Serve as the senior technical point of contact for your workstream — engaging directly with client engineering managers and directors on architecture, delivery strategy, and technical risk

• Proactively identify opportunities to improve engineering culture, delivery practices, and technical quality at the client, and drive that change

• Participate in business development including client expansion conversations and SOW development

 

Team Leadership and Development

• Responsible and accountable for the technical outcomes of your team

• Mentor engineers through real technical challenges — pairing, architecture reviews, feedback that raises their game

• Organize and break down complex work so the team can execute with clarity

 

Liatrio Growth

• Identify and surface expansion opportunities to the sales team and validate SOWs

• Build accelerators from client engagement insights that benefit future engagements

Experience & Skills:

Engineering and Infrastructure

• You have a track record of owning the architectural direction of complex, high-stakes Platform workstreams — you've made the hard calls, been accountable for the outcomes, and learned from the experiences that didn't go as planned

• You've designed and owned CI/CD systems at enterprise scale — defined the strategy, rationalized toolchains, and built governance models that let large organizations move fast without losing control

• You've built and led cloud-native platform adoption in complex production environments — whether that's Kubernetes, managed container services, or other orchestration platforms — and built or overseen the platform engineering layer that makes it operable for teams who aren't infrastructure specialists

• You've built and owned IaC systems that organizations genuinely depend on — module design, remote state management, drift detection, and migrating existing infrastructure into code without breaking production systems

• You've built platform engineering work that demonstrably changed how engineering teams operate — internal developer platforms, self-service tooling, automated governance — reducing toil and improving delivery quality

• You've implemented DevSecOps practices in real enterprise environments — secure pipelines, secrets management, policy as code, automated compliance — making security a first-class engineering concern

• You've built observability programs that changed how teams behave — systems and culture that make engineers capable of understanding and operating what they build

 

AI and Intelligent Systems

• You've integrated AI capabilities into real Platform and platform workflows — intelligent pipeline automation, AI-augmented developer tooling, or operational automation — and you can speak to the architecture, the tradeoffs, and what actually worked

• You have enough depth in LLM capabilities and agentic patterns to make architectural decisions about where and how to apply them in a Platform context, and guide your team through implementation that holds up in production

• You can have a credible conversation with client technical leaders about where AI creates genuine leverage — grounded in what's real

• You use AI coding tools like Claude, Cursor, or Windsurf as a daily driver — and you actively champion adoption on your team because you've seen the compounding impact on quality and speed

 

Requirements:

• 8+ years of hands-on Platform engineering experience, with demonstrated ownership of complex technical workstreams

• Employment eligibility: must be authorized to work in the United States or Canada without the need for sponsorship.

• Travel availability: 25-50% depending on client needs

• Full benefits including unlimited PTO, funded HSA option, 401k match, monthly LiveWell stipend, and quarterly company bonus

• Annual base salary: $170,000- $200,000 , depending on experience