Principal Engineer, Platform

Smartly

As a Senior Quality Engineer at Smartly, you will define and scale quality standards across our Product & Engineering organization. Operating within a small, lean group, this role is highly visible to engineering leadership and offers the opportunity to make a massive impact across the entire company. Your success will be defined by your ability to build deep, trusted partnerships with engineering teams and align them with modern quality standards. You will act as a coach and catalyst - pairing with teams to uplift their practices, leveraging AI for high-velocity delivery, and ensuring quality is seamlessly integrated into how we scale. Working closely with our Staff Quality Engineer, Principal Engineers, and Infrastructure teams, you'll champion engineering excellence through hands-on collaboration and guidance. We are technology-agnostic but currently rely on TypeScript, Playwright, GitHub Actions, PostgreSQL, BigQuery and Sentry. You should be comfortable getting acquainted with new tools and approaches quickly. AS A SENIOR QUALITY ENGINEER, YOU WILL... * Build deep working relationships with Engineering Managers and leadership to champion engineering excellence and drive adoption of modern quality practices. * Partner directly with engineering teams by pairing on active tasks. Show them firsthand how to deliver fast with a predictable level of quality, establishing self-sustaining mechanisms so they can maintain this velocity without your active involvement. * Champion the use of self-service quality tools and guardrails. Your focus will be on getting teams to seamlessly incorporate these tools into their daily operations to ensure quality at scale. * Package the best practices and insights gained from pairing into robust, self-service quality tools and frameworks. This tooling will embed quality guardrails directly into daily operations, allowing engineering teams to maintain high standards at scale without your active, day-to-day involvement. * Dive into quality indicator metrics to identify trends, handle ad-hoc analytical requests, and translate complex data into clear, actionable insights. WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR... * 7+ years of experience in Quality Engineering, Software Engineering, or Developer Experience (DevEx), with a proven track record of leading cross-team initiatives and driving process improvements through collaboration. * Proven ability to build strong relationships with Engineering Managers and influence the entire product organization * You are persistent, highly autonomous, and comfortable operating in a tiny team. You don't wait for permission - you proactively unblock yourself and drive initiatives across the finish line. * While you don't need to be a hardcore technologist, you must have enough hands-on experience with modern tech stacks (TypeScript, Playwright, GitHub Actions, SQL databases) to pair effectively with seasoned developers and speak their language confidently. * Strong familiarity with utilizing LLMs to accelerate development workflows, with the experience of coaching others on how to use AI safely and efficiently. * Comfort with a rapid discovery and prototyping mindset. You value early feedback from internal "customers" and can pivot approaches quickly based on real-world findings. * Ability to work in a hybrid capacity from our Helsinki office 3 days a week (more if you like) WHAT WE OFFER YOU At Smartly, we offer a place where you can advance your career. Here, you'll find: An Inclusive Global Culture: Join a team of over 750 Smartlies, representing more than 60 nationalities across 24 locations in 13 countries. We cultivate a culture built on trust, transparency, and open feedback, where diverse perspectives are valued and encouraged. Global Impact: Contribute to a company making a global impact, directly influencing our customers' success and business growth. Focus on Wellbeing: We prioritize your health with healthcare packages, mental health services, and a commitment to work-life balance through paid holidays and family leave. Comprehensive Rewards: Benefit from equity options, performance-based rewards, competitive compensation, and career development opportunities. Flexible Hybrid Workplace: Experience a hybrid work model, balancing office collaboration with remote work, and the option to work abroad for up to 30 days annually. WHAT TO EXPECT FROM OUR RECRUITMENT EXPERIENCE: * Meet your Recruiter: Get to know each other and learn about working at Smartly. * Meet the Team Lead: A 1-on-1 with your closest collaborator to align on the role's vision. * Influence & Collaboration Session: A scenario-based discussion focused on how you build partnerships with Engineering Managers and navigate a change. * Coding & Architecture session: An interactive coding session where you'll design and implement a piece of internal developer tooling. * Meet the Leadership in a Final Meeting: A brief discussion with our SVP of Engineering. Apply Now and Shape Your Future with Smartly! ABOUT SMARTLY Smartly is the AI-powered advertising technology company transforming ad experiences for brands and their consumers. Our comprehensive advertising platform seamlessly integrates the capabilities of media, creative, and intelligence to power more than 800 billion impressions and generate more than 300 billion creatives annually, delivering tangible business outcomes for brands and advertisers. Smartly is the only company in the industry recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Creative Advertising Technologies with PwC validating the results it delivers for brands. We manage creative and media for 700+ brands worldwide and $6B in ad spend across the largest media platforms, including Facebook, Google, Instagram, Pinterest, Snap, and TikTok. Our end-to-end technology, unmatched access to media platforms and exceptional customer service help Fortune 500 brands to reach and engage consumers and learn what performs best.Smartly is a multinational and diverse team of 750+ Smartlies from 60+ nationalities, working in 13 countries. Together, we want to create and maintain an inclusive environment where everyone feels respected and heard. Our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion approach is at the heart of it. Visit Smartly to learn more. The processing of your information is described in our Candidate Privacy Notice.

9fin

About 9fin 9fin is the AI platform powering global debt markets — the world’s largest asset class at over $145 trillion. Debt markets are vast, global, and mission-critical, yet still run on fragmented data, PDFs, and manual workflows. 9fin replaces this broken infrastructure with a single platform that centralises proprietary credit data, deep analysis, and high-value workflows across global markets. Today, 9fin powers teams at 300+ blue-chip institutions worldwide, including global banks, asset managers, private equity firms, law firms, and advisors. The business is scaling at exceptional speed, with rapid expansion in the US and best-in-class retention driven by deep workflow adoption. We’re at a defining inflection point. With proven product-market fit and strong, global market pull, 9fin is accelerating toward becoming the category-defining platform for debt markets worldwide. WE'RE LOOKING FOR A PRINCIPAL ENGINEER TO OWN THE HARDEST TECHNICAL PROBLEMS AT 9FIN — THE ONES THAT CUT ACROSS TEAMS, DON'T BELONG CLEANLY TO ANY SINGLE DOMAIN, AND HAVE THE HIGHEST CONSEQUENCE IF THEY GO WRONG. 9fin sits at the intersection of financial data and AI. We ingest, model, and surface complex debt capital markets intelligence at scale. What we need now is someone who works across all of our areas (from AI, to Analytics, Platform, and Product Engineering) — setting the architectural standard, owning the foundational problems nobody else owns, and being the senior technical voice that makes the whole thing cohere. This is not a domain lead role. It's not advisory either. It's for someone who is energised by complexity and ambiguity, who wants to own the problems that are genuinely hard, and who can move between deep technical work and cross-org influence without losing credibility in either direction. WHAT YOU'LL OWN These are the cross-cutting problems that don't belong cleanly to any one team — but that everything else depends on. Core data model and entity resolution 9fin's value depends on how well we understand financial entities and the relationships between them — issuers, instruments, deals, counterparties, legal documents. This is hard: data is messy, sources conflict, and the model has to serve analytics, AI, and product simultaneously. You'll own the decisions that shape this foundation and hold the standard for how we model and resolve financial data at scale. Foundational architectural decisions When a decision is big enough to affect multiple teams and long-lived enough to be hard to undo, it lands with you. You'll write the RFCs, facilitate the debate, make the call, and be accountable for the outcome. WHAT YOU'LL OVERSEE You'll work closely with the Heads/Directors of Analytics, AI, Platform, and Product Engineering — not to run their domains, but to raise the bar across all of them. * Bring architectural coherence to decisions made within individual domains * Identify technical risks and compounding complexity before they become incidents * Set standards for engineering quality — system design, observability, reliability, API design — that every team builds to * Be the senior technical voice in cross-team planning, roadmap discussions, and major build vs. buy decisions * Mentor and stretch the most senior engineers across the org WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR You're the person who: * Has operated at principal or staff level in a data-intensive, fast-moving engineering org — and has the range to show for it * Can credibly walk into a conversation about data pipeline architecture, RAG evaluation, API design, or system scalability — and add something useful in all of them * Owns problems, not just opinions. You're not here to review and advise; you're here to make calls and be accountable for them * Writes code when it matters — the proof of concept that validates a direction, the deep dive that unblocks the team, the PR that sets the standard others build from * Has strong opinions about what good engineering looks like and can defend them without being precious about being wrong * Is energised by the problems nobody else can solve, not unsettled by them Technical bar: * Deep experience with complex data modelling, entity resolution, and data pipelines in production environments * Proven experience designing and shipping AI/LLM systems — RAG, structured extraction, evaluation frameworks — beyond the prototype stage * Strong backend and distributed systems knowledge: APIs, service architecture, scalability, observability * Experience making and owning foundational architectural decisions that affected how an entire engineering org worked * Proficiency in Python; comfort across the stack where it matters Nice to have: * Experience with financial data, legal documents, or other semi-structured, domain-rich datasets * Background as a founding engineer, early-stage CTO, or technical lead who has built systems from scratch and lived with the consequences WHY THIS ROLE * The problems you'll own are genuinely hard — messy financial data, complex entity relationships, AI systems where correctness really matters * You'll have real authority over foundational decisions, not just influence over them * 9fin's engineering org is strong and growing — you'll be working with and stretching great engineers, not compensating for weak ones * High ownership, high impact, and the chance to shape how a serious data and AI company scales its technical foundations Benefits We’re a scaling start up and we enjoy sharing our success, when the company succeeds, we always reinvest that in our people. We also offer huge amounts of responsibility, an abundance of opportunity for growth and a platform to truly excel. Financial & Insurance * Competitive Salary (our salary bands are benchmarked at the top end of the market) * Equity options * Pension (your minimum contributions are 4% with 9fin matching up to 7%) * Private Medical Insurance * Paid sick leave with Income Protection for long periods of illness * Group Life Assurance * Season Ticket Loan & Cycle to Work schemes Time off * 25 holiday days per year * Local public holidays (with the ability to exchange them for alternative days) * Hybrid working model, to allow you the flexibility to decide how, where and when you do your best work * Work abroad for up to 3 months a year * 1 month paid sabbatical after 5 years of service * Enhanced parental leave & flexible working arrangements available Training & Culture * Professional learning and development budget * Quarterly team socials * Summer and Winter company social events 9fin is an equal opportunities employer At 9fin we are dedicated to building and promoting a fair and inclusive workplace where everyone can reach their full potential and truly belong. We recognize that building diverse teams enables a more creative and productive environment. If you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t perfectly align with the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You might just be who we’re looking for — either for this role, or perhaps another.

Aker Systems

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations.  We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track.  The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories.  We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply.  We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. PRINCIPAL ENGINEER – DATA PLATFORM Location: Remote (UK-based; Security Clearance Required) A UK Government Security Check (SC) clearance is required for this role. If you don’t currently hold SC clearance, we can support you in applying, provided you have lived and worked in the UK for a minimum of 5 years. As a Principal Data Platform Engineer, you will define and drive the technical vision, architecture, and evolution of data platforms for a government client. You will operate at a systems and organisational level, shaping how data is ingested, processed, governed, and consumed across multiple teams and services. This role goes beyond hands-on engineering — it requires deep technical authority, cross-team influence, and strategic decision-making to ensure platforms are secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned to long-term business outcomes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KEY RESPONSIBILITIES * Define and own the technical strategy for data platform architecture, balancing short-term delivery with long-term scalability and maintainability. * Lead the design of complex, distributed data systems, including batch and real-time processing at scale. * Establish platform-wide standards, patterns, and best practices for data engineering, reliability, and security. * Act as a technical authority and mentor, guiding senior and lead engineers across teams. * Drive architecture decisions across multiple squads, ensuring alignment with enterprise and government standards. * Partner with architects, product leaders, and stakeholders to translate ambiguous requirements into scalable technical solutions. * Ensure high availability, fault tolerance, and low-latency performance across critical data services. * Champion engineering excellence, including TDD, BDD, observability, and continuous delivery practices. * Oversee data modelling standards and governance, ensuring consistency, lineage, and integrity across systems. * Lead cross-team incident analysis and root cause resolution, driving systemic improvements. * Evaluate and introduce new technologies, tools, and frameworks to evolve platform capabilities. * Provide technical leadership in client engagements, influencing decisions and managing senior stakeholder expectations. * Ensure operational excellence, including resilience planning, cost optimisation, and platform sustainability. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REQUIRED EXPERIENCE & COMPETENCIES NON-TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES * Operating effectively in high ambiguity and incomplete problem spaces * Influencing senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams * Navigating complex client environments and competing priorities * Leading through technical authority rather than hierarchy * Driving alignment across multiple teams and domains * Continuously evaluating and adopting emerging technologies strategically ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES * Extensive experience designing and building large-scale, distributed data platforms * Deep expertise in Java-based systems and modern backend architectures * Strong experience with streaming and event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis) * Experience with large-scale data processing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Flink, Kafka Streams) * Expertise in cloud-native architectures, ideally on AWS (including Lambda, S3, managed services) * Strong understanding of data pipeline design, orchestration, and optimisation * Experience with data modelling at scale, including schema design and evolution * Expertise in relational and NoSQL database design and performance tuning * Proven track record of implementing CI/CD, observability, and platform reliability practices * Strong experience with DevOps and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) * Ability to define and enforce engineering standards across teams ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DESIRABLE SKILLS * Advanced expertise in data modelling strategies and trade-offs across systems * Experience with search and indexing platforms (Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr) * Strong knowledge of CI/CD ecosystems (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, Drone) * Experience with infrastructure automation tools (Terraform, Ansible, Packer) * Exposure to data governance, security, and compliance frameworks in regulated environments ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QUALIFICATIONS * Degree in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent experience) * Typically 10+ years of experience in software/data engineering, with significant time spent in architecture or principal-level roles Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more. Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.