Principal Platform Engineer

Principal Platform Engineer

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Bristol, UK

Reporting To: Stephen Pope

We specialise in turning advances in sensing, AI, and communications into operational capability for the edge, where connectivity may be degraded or denied. Our work focuses on accelerating the deployment of technology, improving decision-making for frontline teams, and protecting people and critical assets in demanding environments.

We're seeking a Principal Platform Engineer to define and lead the engineering platform that underpins how Rowden develops, deploys, and operates technology. The platform will improve developer experience and make Rowden's engineering faster, more consistent, more scalable, and more secure. This is a high-impact opportunity to build the engineering foundations of one of the UK's most exciting technology companies.

Working closely with Software, Infrastructure, ML, IT, Product, QA, and Security teams, you'll lead the delivery of the platform vision, define its architecture, and raise the standard of engineering practice across the organisation. You'll ensure the platform scales with Rowden's ambitions and meets the demands of its engineering teams. This is a hands-on role; you will lead by building.

This role offers hybrid working with a minimum of 3 days per week on site at our Bristol HQ.

For senior roles, compensation is tailored to the scope and the specific experience a candidate brings. Because that can vary significantly, we do not always publish a fixed salary band. We will, however, discuss compensation openly at the first stage of the process and can share an indicative range before either side invests significant time.

Candidates must be eligible for SC Clearance.

More information about security clearance is available here:

Working closely with the Head of Platform Engineering, you'll define and deliver robust platform services, establish the patterns for self-service infrastructure, CI/CD, and observability, and drive the integration of AI/ML capabilities across the organisation. You'll translate platform strategy into a coherent technical roadmap, setting standards that teams across Rowden can build on with confidence.

• Defining the technical architecture and long-term direction of Rowden’s internal developer platform (IDP).
• Leading the design and evolution of IDP capabilities, including self-service provisioning and deployment workflows.
• Defining the platform’s approach to agentic AI, establishing the patterns, guardrails, and runtime infrastructure required to deploy and operate AI agents reliably across the organisation.
• Setting standards for API-first architectures that enable interoperability between systems, services, and external partners.
• Owning the design and governance of CI/CD pipelines to support consistent, secure, and efficient software delivery across the organisation.
• Driving the adoption of modular platform capabilities that allow teams to compose and extend functionality at scale.
• Owning infrastructure-as-code standards and automation practices to ensure repeatability, scalability, and reliability.
• Embedding security, compliance, and best practices into the platform by design, and ensuring these are sustained as the platform evolves.
• Defining and maintaining platform standards, patterns, and reusable components that drive consistency across teams.
• Leading improvements to observability, monitoring, and alerting capabilities across systems and services.
• Mentoring and developing engineers across the organisation, raising the collective standard of platform engineering practice.
• Identifying and driving strategic opportunities to improve developer experience, reducing friction and cognitive load at an organisational level.

We are looking for a technically deep, strategically capable engineer who brings both hands-on expertise and the ability to shape how an organisation builds and operates its platforms.

Skills you'll need:

• Extensive experience designing, building, and operating engineering platforms at scale.
• Deep…