Principal Platform Engineer

Professional Services / Romania

Elevate your career at Qodea, where innovation isn't just a buzzword, it's in our DNA.

We are a global technology group built for what's next, offering high calibre professionals the platform for high stakes work, the kind of work that defines an entire career. When you join us, you're not just taking on projects, you're solving problems that don't even have answers yet.

You will join the exclusive roster of talent that global leaders, including Google, Snap, Diageo, PayPal, and Jaguar Land Rover call when deadlines seem impossible, when others have already tried and failed, and when the solution absolutely has to work.

Forget routine consultancy. You will operate where technology, design, and human behaviour meet to deliver tangible outcomes, fast. This is work that leaves a mark, work you'll be proud to tell your friends about.

Qodea is built for what's next. An environment where your skills will evolve at the frontier of innovation and AI, ensuring continuous growth and development.

We are looking for a Principal Platform Engineer to engage with enterprise-level organisations to offer a consultative view and direction on best practices using Google Cloud solutions. 

We look for people who embody:

Innovation to solve the hardest problems.

‍Accountability for every result.

‍Integrity always.

The main purpose of this role is to lead cloud technology initiatives by applying deep technical expertise and business insight to help shape internal engineering standards.

This role is designed for impact, and we believe our best work happens when we connect. While we operate a flexible model, we expect you to spend time on site (at our offices or a client location) for collaboration sessions, customer meetings, and internal workshops.

In this role you'll:

• Act as a trusted advisor to customers, developing a deep understanding of their technical challenges and leveraging GCP technologies, patterns and practices to address them effectively.
• Provide expert technical guidance and mentorship to platform engineers, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement
• Design highly available, cloud native platforms tailored to customer needs
• Advise customers on modern software development and architecture techniques such as 12 factor applications, microservices and serverless architectures
• Develop internal tooling for the wider Platform Team, that can help us to do more, and be more effective
• Collaborate with customers and our Pre-sales Team to translate requirements into technical designs and guide the process through to solution delivery
• Partner with our Pre-sales Team to support the development of Go-To-Market strategies that align with customer needs and business goals
• Keep abreast of technology developments, ensuring the Qodea business remains ahead of the technology curve.
• Represent Qodea in external engagements with Google and the wider tech community. We can align this to your strengths, for example technical writing or presenting at events. 
• Get involved in our drive towards social progress where possible. Whether that's getting involved in one of our community projects at Qodea or simply buying local when travelling with the company.

Essential Skills and Experience:

• Extensive hands-on experience with at least one major cloud provider (GCP, AWS, Azure)
• Strong experience with Docker and Kubernetes in production environments, with a deep understanding of container orchestration and management.
• Proficient in infrastructure as code (IaC) using tools like Terraform, and comfortable with configuration management tooling such as Puppet, Chef, Ansible, or Salt.
• Expert-level understanding of Linux operating systems (e.g., Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS) with experience in some systems administration and troubleshooting
• Experience with continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) tools, such as Jenkins, ArgoCD, or similar pipelines, with a focus on automation and reliability
• Solid knowledge of modern internet protocols and patterns, including but not limited to GRPC, GraphQL, REST APIs, and related tools.
• Proven experience in a cloud focussed delivery role (DevOps or Software Development)
• You're proactive and you like to solve problems. You want to get involved and make things happen, ensuring the best outcomes for your team, the business and our customers
• Previous experience in a consultancy or professional services role
• Solid knowledge of cloud architecture principles and highly available systems
• Understanding of application development, delivery and infrastructure automation
• Comfortable writing production-quality software in at least one general-purpose programming language (e.g. Python, Go, JavaScript, Java, C++)

Nice to have Skills and Experience:

• Experience working in multi-cloud or with hybrid-cloud architectures
• Familiarity with cloud security frameworks (e.g. HashiCorp Vault, IAM best practices, container security tools)

Compensation and Financial Well-being

• Competitive base salary.
• Discretionary company bonus scheme.
• Employee referral scheme.
• Meal Vouchers.

Health and Wellness

• Health Care Package.
• Life and Health Insurance.

Work-Life Balance and Growth

• Bookster.
• 28 days of annual leave.
• Floating bank holidays.
• An extra paid day off on your birthday.
• Ten paid learning days per year.
• Flexible working hours.
• Sabbatical leave (after 5 years).
• Work from anywhere (up to 3 weeks per year).
• Industry-recognised training and certifications.
• Bonusly: employee recognition and rewards platform.
• Clear opportunities for career development.
• Length of Service Awards.
• Regular company events.

At Qodea, we champion diversity and inclusion. We believe that a career in IT should be open to everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, or neurotype. We value the unique talents and perspectives that each individual brings to our team, and we strive to create a fair and accessible hiring process for all.