Principal Staff Engineer - Platforms

About SEEK

SEEK’s portfolio of diverse businesses make a positive impact on a truly global scale. Our purpose is to help people live more fulfilling and productive working lives and help organisations succeed. We create world-class technology solutions to connect more people to relevant employment, education, small business and volunteer opportunities. We have a culture of high-performance in our workplaces and celebrate the diversity of our employees who contribute to the success of our organisation.

Life at SEEK

SEEK’s purpose is at the centre of everything we do. Our SEEK, which defines the way we work, is all about what makes us unique and a little bit different. Passion, Team, Delivery and Future are our principles that drive innovation and creativity. SEEK strives to support employee wellbeing by providing an amazing experience at work which led us to being named AFR BOSS Top 10 Best Places to Work in Technology (2021-2024). We are proud to work in an environment that's inclusive where everyone's unique ideas, experiences and perspectives are valued.

Our award-winning head office in Cremorne (just a 4 min walk from Richmond station) provides an exceptional space to collaborate with colleagues. The building provides sweeping views of the city, a games area, sit and stand desks at every workstation, modern end-of-trip facilities and Thursday night drinks which gives our people an opportunity to connect in a social setting.

The Team 

SEEK’s purpose is to help people live more fulfilling and productive working lives and help organisations succeed. 

Our Platforms area builds the shared services, infrastructure and developer enablement that underpin SEEK’s experiences for candidates and hirers across APAC. We evolve self-service platform capabilities so teams can ship and operate services reliably, supported by strong observability capabilities.  

You’ll work across an APAC-wide engineering organisation and partner closely with engineering, product, architecture, security, and AI & data leaders. 

The Role 

As a Principal Staff Engineer (Engineering Platforms), you are a technical authority for a major platform area and trusted advisor.  

You’ll provide technical leadership, unblock complex delivery and operational challenges, lift engineering standards across multiple squads, and help ensure platform services remain fit-for-purpose, secure, resilient and aligned to SEEK’s broader technical strategy. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Lead technical direction discussions for a major platform area with key stakeholders, aligning on target architecture, priorities and trade-offs. 

• Unblock hard problems: deep dive on complex technical issues (delivery, reliability, scaling), and guide teams to sound solutions. 

• Raise the bar on platform engineering: define “what good looks like” through standards, guardrails and paved paths, and evolve the platform with modern practices, patterns and tooling that improve adoption. 

• Shape and steer the roadmap with engineering and product leadership, aligning to business priorities while balancing near-term delivery with long-term technical health and platform adoption. 

• Grow technical leadership: coach Staff/Senior Staff engineers and uplift technical capability across the Platforms space. 

• Support AI-enabled uplift by partnering with the AI productivity teams and bringing transformative ways of working into the engineering system, driving adoption by embedding these practices into everyday engineering workflows 

• Stay hands-on where it matters: lead design reviews, pair with teams on critical problems, and prototype or contribute key changes to unblock progress. 

Key Stakeholders 

• Engineering leadership: Engineering Managers, Heads of Engineering, Engineering Directors 

• Architecture & security: Software/Principal Architects, Heads of Architecture, Security leaders 

• Product & business: Product Directors, Head of Product and other domain leaders 

• Platform & data specialists: Staff/Senior Staff Engineers, Platform & Data Engineers, Infrastructure and Service/Incident Management teams 

• Strong experience designing, building and operating platforms or large-scale distributed systems end-to-end. 
• Proven ability to shape and execute technical strategy/roadmaps across multiple teams, balancing delivery with technical health and adoption. 
• Demonstrated strength leading through influence: aligning stakeholders, negotiating trade-offs, and driving decisions to outcomes. 
• Have led the technical direction for Engineering Platforms. 
• Deep foundation in architecture and engineering fundamentals (reliability, scalability, performance, operability, observability, security). 
• Experience improving developer experience via guardrails, paved paths and self-service, reducing toil and cognitive load. 
• Track record of leading technical change and uplifting engineering quality and practices across teams. 
• Strong coaching and mentoring capability, uplifting technical capability across teams; contributions to technical communities are valued. 
• AI fluency for engineering productivity: able to evaluate AI-enabled tools/practices, set pragmatic guardrails, and help teams adopt what delivers value. 

Permanent Perks
At SEEK we offer:

• Annual Performance Bonus Plan
• Support of flexible working, including a mix of office and work from home days depending on your role.
• Paid and unpaid leave benefits including Personal Flexi Days and Volunteer Days, as well as the opportunity to purchase additional leave

At SEEK, we are passionate about fostering a culture of inclusion and wellbeing that embraces and values the diversity of our people. We are a purpose driven business that works with heart.

We know teams with diverse ideas, experiences and perspectives are more creative and are critical to ensuring effective delivery and innovating to enable our future success. As such, we welcome applications from people with diverse backgrounds and life experiences, especially as they relate to gender, sexual identity, culture, faith, disability and life stages. If you have the skills, curiosity and an adaptable mindset but don't meet every responsibility or qualification listed in this advertisement, please still get in touch with us.

Should you require any specific support or adjustments throughout the recruitment process and beyond, please advise us and we will be happy to assist.

For this role, only those candidates with the eligible right to work will be considered.

SEEK kindly requests no unsolicited resumes or approaches from recruitment agencies and will not be responsible for any associated fees.