Senior Principal - Platform Engineer LAN

Job Purpose

The Principal Engineer builds and runs GSKs local area network and campus switching platform as automated, secure, self-service infrastructure, sets the engineering standard within that platform, mentors the engineers around them, and treats the teams who consume the platform as customers. The role works through infrastructure-as-code and golden paths rather than manual configuration, uses AI-assisted engineering across code generation, review and testing, and engineers reliability in by defining SLOs, instrumenting for observability and automating away toil.

This is the senior hands-on engineering role in the platform team, working across local area network and campus switching to integrate and assure delivery as well as building. Engineering roadmap and direction sit with the Engineering Director, reference architecture and standards sit with the Platform Architect, backlog order sits with the Product Owner, and deep reliability engineering sits with the Site Reliability Engineer deployed from Reliability Engineering Operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build and automate platform infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code and golden paths, so that provisioning is repeatable rather than reconstructed each time.
• Use AI-assisted engineering across code generation, review and testing to accelerate delivery and raise quality, reviewing AI-generated output before it is merged.
• Build self-service capabilities and paved roads that reduce friction for consuming teams, so adoption does not depend on the platform teams availability.
• Engineer for reliability by defining SLOs, instrumenting platforms for observability and automating to reduce toil, working with the Site Reliability Engineer on standards.
• Set and uphold engineering standards, secure-by-default practices and code quality within the platform, and hold them in code review.
• Contribute to incident response and drive permanent automated fixes with Reliability Engineering rather than repeating manual recovery.
• Mentor and technically lead other engineers, including partner engineers, linking engineering work to platform OKRs and outcomes.
• Integrate and assure supplier or managed-service components, holding partner-delivered engineering to the same standards and code quality as internal work.
• Work the platforms manual task and toil backlog, converting identified candidates into automation and evidencing the effort removed.
• Close observability coverage gaps for the platform, so that reliability can be measured rather than inferred.
• Contribute engineering-led items to the platform backlog held by the Product Owner, including technical debt, upgrade and automation work, with the cost of not doing them stated.
• Apply the reference architectures and patterns set by the Platform Architect, and raise a case for change rather than diverging locally.

Key Relationships/Customers

Business Stakeholders

• Internal GSK teams consuming the platform as customers of its self-service capability
• Quality and compliance functions where the platform supports GxP activity

Tech Stakeholders

• Engineering Director as line manager and owner of the engineering roadmap
• Platform Architect for reference architectures, patterns and standards
• Product Owner for backlog order and acceptance of engineering-led items
• Site Reliability Engineer and Reliability Engineering Operations for SLOs, observability and incident prevention
• Other Principal Engineers and platform engineers across the domain

Other

• Managed service partners contributing engineering capacity to the platform.
• Technology vendors during evaluation and proof of concept

Professional Qualifications

• Degree in a technology or engineering discipline, or equivalent practical experience (e.g., Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electronics).
• Relevant technical certifications desirable (e.g., a recognised cloud certification for AWS, GCP or Azure, Certified Kubernetes Administrator, or a network vendor certification relevant to the platform).

Area of Specialisation

• Hands-on platform engineering in cloud, network or digital workplace, covering infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD and containers where relevant.
• Automation-first and secure-by-default engineering, with an SRE mindset covering SLOs, observability and toil reduction.

Why is this level of Education Required

• Deep engineering credentials are needed because the role sets the engineering standard other engineers and partner teams build to, and that standard has to hold under code review rather than by assertion.

Experience Required

• Overall 15 years typically 6-8 years in platform, infrastructure or software engineering, including at least two years as the senior technical voice in a team.
• Deep hands-on depth in the relevant platform domain, whether cloud and hosting, network or digital workplace.
• Practical experience of infrastructure-as-code, for example Terraform, applied to production estates rather than proofs of concept.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, and with containers and Kubernetes where relevant to the platform.
• Track record building self-service capability that other teams adopted without hand-holding.
• Experience instrumenting for observability, defining SLOs and reducing toil through automation.
• Experience with AI-assisted engineering tooling, including judgement about when generated output is not fit to merge.
• Extensive experience engineering enterprise local area networks and campus switching services.
• Strong knowledge of routing, switching, segmentation, resilience and complex fault diagnosis.
• Evidence of applying standards and automation to improve deployment quality, reliability or supportability.

Desirable Requirements

• Professional level enterprise networking certification, such as CCNP Enterprise or JNCIP Enterprise Routing and Switching.
• Experience with application programming interfaces, infrastructure as code or network assurance platforms.
• Experience supporting manufacturing, laboratory or operational technology networks.

Skills/Background

• Automation-first instinct, treating a repeated manual task as a defect rather than as work.
• Code review discipline, holding quality without becoming a bottleneck.
• Mentoring ability with engineers of varying experience, including partner engineers outside the line.
• Judgement about when AI-generated code is fit to merge and when it is not.
• Customer mindset toward consuming teams, who can route around a platform that is hard to use.
• Willingness to make technical debt and its cost visible rather than absorbing it silently.

Skills

• Automation Technology
• Cisco Switching
• Cloud Based Services
• Computer Programming
• Configuration Management (CM)
• Infrastructure As Code (IaC)
• IP Address Management (IPAM)
• Load Balancers
• Network Design
• Network Engineering
• Networks
• Operational Technology (OT)
• Packet Switching
• Security Engineering
• Software-Defined Networking Wide Area Network (SD-WAN)
• SRE Observability
• System Monitors
• Wireless System Design
• Zero Trust Architecture

Disclaimer: This job posting has been aggregated from external source. Role details, content, and availability are subject to change. Applicants are advised to confirm the latest information directly on the company website before applying.