Principal Platform Engineer

Company Description

We are SGS – the world's leading testing, inspection and certification company. Today, that mission is driven by data and technology. With 99,500 employees across 2,500 locations, we have a unique opportunity to build world-class digital products. We are now launching a new AI Hub in Madrid to do just that. This is your opportunity to build the foundational platform that will power our entire engineering organization. 

Job Description

We are building a new, product-focused engineering culture from the ground up, and we need a pioneer to build our racetrack. Your mission is to create a frictionless, automated platform that enables our teams to ship code multiple times a day with the executive backing and autonomy to make it happen. 

As a Principal Platform Engineer, you are the master craftsman of our engineering environment. Your dual mission is to:

1) Build and run a lean, secure, and highly automated cloud platform (the "paved road") that makes it effortless for all engineers to build and ship.

2) Act as a lead, hands-on architect for our team's own flagship products, ensuring they are scalable, resilient, and built with practical, reusable patterns.

What You'll Build and Own

• Build the Paved Road: Engineer core infrastructure from the ground up using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), Kubernetes, and a fully automated CI/CD pipeline. Your goal is to make the right way the easy way.
• Lead by Building: Act as the lead full-stack or backend engineer on our most critical projects, architecting through code and demonstrating best practices as you help deliver our first generation of data and AI products. 
• Champion Reusability & Velocity: Identify, generalize, and build high-quality, reusable components and architectural patterns that emerge from our work and the work of other teams.
• Automate for Speed & Safety: Implement a practical DevSecOps culture by embedding automated security, testing, and observability directly into the development workflow.
• Be a Force Multiplier: Act as a key technical mentor and partner to other engineering teams, helping them leverage the platform and adopt best practices to increase their own velocity.

Qualifications

• Cloud & IaC: Expert-level, hands-on proficiency with a major cloud provider (GCP, AWS) and Terraform. You don't just use it; you architect with it.
• Containers & Orchestration: Mastery of Docker and deep, practical knowledge of Kubernetes for building and operating resilient applications.
• CI/CD & Automation: Extensive experience building high-velocity CI/CD pipelines from scratch (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) with a focus on speed and developer feedback.
• Software & Systems Design: Proven experience as a senior software engineer building distributed, cloud-native applications. Strong skills in a language like Go, Python, or TypeScript.
• Observability: A practical, hands-on approach to building an observability stack (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger) that provides actionable insights, not just dashboards.

Who You Are

• You have extensive (e.g., 8+ years) experience and identify as a builder first, with a background in SRE, Platform Engineering, or senior Software Engineering.
• You are a pragmatist who hates bureaucracy and believes the best architecture is the simplest one that works.
• You measure your success by the velocity and autonomy of the engineers you support.
• You love getting your hands dirty and leading from the front.

Additional Information

What We Offer

• Top-of-Market Compensation: A highly competitive salary and bonus package for Madrid, designed to attract and retain premier talent for this strategic role. 
• A Clear Growth Path: This role offers a direct path to technical leadership and the opportunity to build and mentor a team around your architectural vision. 
• A Compelling Mission: Build the platform that will run the AI and Data products that have a real-world impact on global safety, sustainability, and supply chains. 
• Foundational Impact: You will be the first Principal Platform Engineer in our new Digital Hub, setting the standards for how a global leader builds and ships software. 
• Greenfield Ownership & Autonomy: This is not about maintaining legacy systems. You have a mandate to build our entire cloud-native platform from scratch, backed by C-level sponsorship.