Principal Platform Engineer

Job Description

We believe in better. And we make it happen.

Better content. Better products. And better careers.

Working in Tech, Product or Data at Sky is about building the next and the new. From broadband to broadcast, streaming to mobile, SkyQ to Sky Glass, we never stand still. We optimise and innovate.

We turn big ideas into the products, content and services millions of people love.

And we do it all right here at Sky.

As a Principal Platform Engineer, you will be at the heart of building world‑class systems for Sky and Global Streaming Technology. You will be responsible for defining product strategy and ensuring that we are constantly innovating and delivering the best possible service to our development teams. We have a large community of Principal and Lead engineers across both DPE and the wider GST/Sky group, and you would be expected to work closely with these colleagues whether in your department or not as we truly believe in engineering‑led delivery across the entire organisation.

Our mission is to do all the heavy lifting for engineering teams; this is at the heart of everything we do as a department and is a key driver in how we make decisions. We are looking for a Principal Engineer to join the Platform Infrastructure Department and help drive improvements and new features on our global platform. In this role, you will form part of an Engineering department that spans London, Lisbon and Prague.

We develop and provide a platform that empowers development and SRE teams to deploy their applications safely and run them reliably, securely and efficiently at scale.

The teams in London play key roles in designing and building some of the key products delivered by DPE such as a Kubernetes based PaaS, a robust automated path to production using Git Hub Actions and a developer portal utilizing Datadog. Alongside delivery teams we also have the bulk of the leadership team based in London which focuses on setting the department strategy, defining key delivery milestones using OKRs and ensuring the teams work as effectively as possible.

• Work with peer Principal engineers, Heads of Departments, Architects, Engineers, and Analysts to help strategies and deliver innovative end‑to‑end solution designs for products which deliver value to our development teams.
• Be ready to champion your ideas and designs, innovation can sometimes be scary, but we need Principal engineers to push those boundaries and encourage change where value can be realised.
• Work closely with architecture and external engineering teams to ensure alignment of project goals and priorities.
• Build and drive the principal engineer community both within DPE and across GST more broadly. Providing guidance and mentorship to engineer roles within the department, helping them develop their technical and leadership skills.
• Ensure data quality, integrity, and security by establishing and maintaining data governance standards and practices.
• Accountable for overall project analysis, working closely with analysts and stakeholders to ensure we have exhaustive requirements defined before starting development.

• Hands on experience working with product and agile delivery teams, an understanding of iterative development and agile ways of working. Specifically, backend delivery teams using technologies including Kubernetes and AWS cloud products.
• Proven experience in development languages such as Golang/Typescript.
• Effective communication and interpersonal skills, able to assimilate information and present to audiences from various backgrounds and levels of understanding, spanning Product and Technology. The ability to explain highly technical concepts to a business focused audience.
• Experience analysing a problem, refining requirements, documenting findings, and making recommendations within a team; with a sound understanding of what is important when building highly available, highly reliable services to best serve our customers.
• Experience working within a delivery team, comprising of the following activities: creating user stories and acceptance criteria using techniques such as BDD and facilitating user story mapping…