Principal Engineer, Platform & Applications

Motional•Boston, MA

43d•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking an exceptionally talented Principal Engineer for the Platform & Apps Group. This critical role is dedicated to maximizing engineering velocity and effectiveness by defining the architecture and governance across all Developer Platform functions: Platform Engineering (SRE/DevOps), Engineering Enablement (Bazel/CI/CD), and the new Platform Development efforts. You will be the Chief Architect responsible for setting the technical vision for our core build systems, defining the architecture for our internal tools, and ensuring technical excellence that scales with the entire organization. Your influence will be purely technical, driving architectural standards across the Platform & Apps group.

Requirements

12+ years of progressive experience in Software Engineering, with a significant focus on Platform Engineering, Developer Experience, or Build/Release Engineering.
5+ years acting as a Principal Engineer, Chief Architect, or equivalent Individual Contributor role, demonstrating the ability to set technical strategy and drive architectural initiatives across multiple functional teams.
Core Systems Mastery: Mandatory expert-level proficiency in advanced build systems (Bazel), complex CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI/GitHub Actions), and modern configuration/deployment technologies.
Platform & Tooling Architecture: Deep expertise in architecting, designing, and scaling complex internal developer platforms, including experience with Developer Portals (e.g., Backstage) and internal service-oriented applications built with Node.js/Go/Python.
Cloud & Systems Expertise: Strong knowledge of Cloud Architecture (AWS preferred), distributed systems design, SRE principles, and performance engineering.
Exceptional technical communication, negotiation, and influence skills with the ability to articulate and defend complex architectural concepts to both technical and executive audiences.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience in the Autonomous Vehicle, Robotics, or large-scale IoT/Fleet Management industries.
Direct experience architecting and customizing a Backstage-based developer portal in a large-scale engineering organization.
Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/CloudFormation) and advanced observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog).
Proven expertise in defining and implementing DORA or other engineering performance metrics frameworks.

Responsibilities

Chief Architect & Technical Strategy (Developer Platform)
Architectural Vision & Governance: Define and own the multi-year technical architecture and standards for the entire Developer Platform ecosystem, ensuring resilience, performance, and scalability across all internal tools and infrastructure.
Technical Authority: Act as the technical decision-maker and expert consultant for complex architecture challenges within Platform Engineering and Enablement, ensuring alignment across technical roadmaps.
Engineering Quality: Champion and architect solutions that enforce technical standards, drive code quality, and automate governance across the entire developer lifecycle.
Mentorship & Elevation: Elevate the organization's technical capability by providing expert-level consulting, conducting rigorous design reviews, and introducing advanced architectural patterns to all engineering teams within the Platform Group.
Platform Engineering & Enablement Expertise
Core Systems Mastery: Own the architectural evolution and technical governance of the mission-critical Bazel build system and associated toolchains, ensuring optimized, reproducible, and hermetic builds for our core product.
CI/CD & SRE Excellence: Define the technical standards for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices and CI/CD pipeline governance (GitLab) for critical developer services, focusing on optimizing efficiency, uptime, and developer experience (DX).
Productivity Strategy: Architect and lead the implementation of systems for measuring and improving engineering performance, utilizing established metrics frameworks (e.g., DORA, FLOW, SPACE).
Cross-Platform Standards & Oversight
Architectural Standard Bearer: Establish and enforce unified technical standards and best practices for cloud security, operational monitoring, and reliability that govern development across the entire Platform & Apps organization.
High-Level Consulting: Provide expert technical consultation on the highest-risk architectural decisions related to Cloud Applications, focusing solely on adherence to platform standards and risk mitigation.
Cloud Efficiency: Drive technical initiatives for achieving cloud resource optimization and cost efficiency across all AWS-hosted services within the Platform & Apps portfolio.