Principal Backend Engineer; Platform

Principal Engineer (Platform) Process Manufacturing UK, Remote About CAI

CAI is a leading provider of digital work execution platforms designed to enhance operational efficiency and drive productivity in industrial environments. CAI’s platform leverages advanced technology to convert complex, paper-based procedures into streamlined, digital workflows. By enabling real‑time data collection and integration, CAI facilitates greater visibility into work processes, allowing organizations to make informed decisions, optimize performance, and ensure compliance.

In addition to robust workflow management capabilities, CAI emphasizes data‑driven insights to foster continuous improvement. CAI's solutions are tailored to address the unique challenges of industries such as manufacturing, energy, and pharmaceuticals, helping organizations achieve higher operational standards and reduce costs. With a commitment to innovation and user‑centric design, CAI empowers businesses to transition from traditional practices to a modern, digital approach, driving growth and enhancing efficiency.

We are seeking a Principal Engineer (Platform) to lead the technical vision, strategy, and execution of our core platform systems. In this role, you will design and scale the foundational infrastructure that powers our products — ensuring reliability, performance, security, and developer productivity across the organization.

As a senior technical leader, you’ll shape our platform architecture, drive automation and observability initiatives, and mentor engineering teams in building robust, cloud‑native systems. You’ll be at the center of transforming our platform into a high‑performing, developer‑friendly ecosystem.

• Platform Architecture & Strategy: Define and evolve the technical architecture for scalable, secure, and resilient platforms supporting all business‑critical applications.
• Technical Leadership: Provide hands‑on technical guidance to engineering teams — from design and implementation to performance tuning and troubleshooting.
• Infrastructure & Automation: Lead initiatives in infrastructure‑as‑code, CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, and automated deployment strategies.
• Cloud & Scalability: Design and optimize systems for cloud scalability and high availability across AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Observability & Reliability: Drive adoption of monitoring, alerting, and observability frameworks to ensure system reliability and rapid incident response.
• Security & Compliance: Implement platform security best practices, manage secrets, enforce least‑privilege principles, and ensure compliance (e.g., SOC2, ISO 27001).
• Collaboration: Work cross‑functionally with product, data, and application teams to align infrastructure and platform services with organizational goals.
• Mentorship: Develop and coach senior engineers, promoting a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement.

• Experience: 10+ years of professional software or infrastructure engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a senior/principal‑level role.
• Technical Expertise:
• Proven track record building and scaling platform or infrastructure systems supporting multiple product teams.
• Deep expertise in cloud‑native architectures (AWS / GCP / Azure).
• Strong knowledge of Kubernetes, Docker
  , and microservice orchestration.
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Cloud Formation, Pulumi).
• Experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines (Git Hub Actions, Jenkins, ArgoCD, or similar).
• Solid understanding of networking, observability, and distributed systems
  .
• Leadership: Demonstrated success in influencing architectural decisions and guiding large‑scale, cross‑functional technical initiatives.
• Communication: Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, able to bridge the gap between strategic vision and hands‑on execution.

• Experience building developer platforms
  , internal tools, or “platform‑as‑a‑product” initiatives.
• Background in SRE, Dev Ops, or infrastructure engineering
  .
• Familiarity with service meshes
  , event‑driven architectures
  , and data pipelines
  .
• Contributions to open‑source infrastructure projects or technical publications.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.