[Hiring] Principal Product Platform Engineer @Datacom

Role Description

The Smartly Platforms and Architecture Team are looking for a Principal Product Platform Engineer to own end-to-end technology outcomes and architecture.

• Creating structural leverage across the business through technology and automation.
• Creating structural advantages in cost-to-serve.
• Helping engineers be the best versions of themselves through training, mentoring, and sponsorship.

This Principal role creates the most architectural leverage in the company. It's vital that we have a kind, thoughtful, technically deep individual contributor in the role who can lift up the business around them.

You are the senior technical authority in a major platform domain, probably core platform design + shared frameworks, and we'll shape that to your strengths.

• Co-author the platform strategy.
• Make architectural decisions that other teams depend on.
• Design and operate shared services, identity foundations, developer tooling, and reliability standards.
• Drive simplification of the platform over time.

No two weeks are the same, but here's the rough shape:

• Design reviews — running them and being the second pair of eyes in reviews across the org.
• 1:1s with the engineers you mentor and with the manager.
• Pairing with engineers in product squads on harder technical problems.
• Building — automating processes and working on clean architecture upgrades.
• Writing architecture decisions, design docs, and agentic prompts for the team.
• Focus time is non-negotiable; meetings have a purpose or they don't happen.

Qualifications

• Experience as a Principal or senior-most engineer on a team.
• Background as a solution architect who has been coding.
• Experience making architectural calls at scale.
• Deep comfort in a demanding application engineering space.
• Familiarity with C# and dotnet; knowledge of Python and TypeScript is a plus.
• Experience with domain-driven design.
• Ability to thrive in a modular monolith environment.

Requirements

• Judgement, taste, vision, and context.
• Ability to differentiate between excellent work and work that merely appears excellent.
• Understanding of best practices and their applicability.

Benefits

• Hands-on management that builds empathy.
• Investment in personal growth and ability to grow others.
• Focus on strategic laziness to automate manual tasks.
• Respect for focus time and remote-first intentionality.

Company Description

Smartly is committed to building a team that reflects Aotearoa New Zealand, and particularly welcomes applications from women, Māori, Pasifika, takatāpui, disabled and neurodivergent engineers, and anyone who took a non-linear path into the work.

If you need any adjustments to be at your best in the conversation or beyond, tell us.