Principal Software Engineer (Platforms)
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Key skills for this role
Key Skills for This Role
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Key areas of responsibility
Build the Internal Developer Platform: design, build, and run the platform that Rowden's software teams and their coding agents depend on to write, test, ship, and operate code.
Own software engineering infrastructure and workflows end-to-end: source control, CI/CD, artefact management, secrets, and the environments our software runs in.
Champion new tooling and best practice: track what the best engineering organisations are doing, evaluate it rigorously, and bring in whatever earns its place.
Raise standards through influence: set technical direction and standards across teams you do not manage, by building things that people choose to use.
Lead the implementation of agentic AI: roll out coding agents across engineering workflows and own how and where they're used.
Advocate for agentic engineering across the business: run evaluations, evidence the benefits, and train teams on effective use.
Build the infrastructure that makes agents trustworthy: sandboxing, permissioning, audit logging, and observability so that what an agent did is efficient, secure, and fully transparent to the engineer who has to stand behind it.
Create repeatable development environments: make local, cloud, and target-representative environments reproducible, quick to stand up, and identical for every engineer.
Key skills, experience and behaviours
Substantial experience as a principal or staff software engineer.
Demonstrable experience building developer platforms, internal tooling, and paved paths used by engineering team.
Hands-on experience implementing agentic AI in real engineering workflows (beyond individual experimentation).
Experience designing the guardrails around agentic AI: sandboxing, permissioning, audit logging, or observability for tools operating with elevated access.
Deep, hands-on experience of CI/CD, infrastructure as code, containers, and Kubernetes.
Experience of building and deploying reproducible development environments.
A track record of driving adoption by persuasion and good product decisions, not mandate.
Clear written communication, including documentation that engineers actually read.
You treat the platform as a product and your colleagues as customers, and you measure yourself on their throughput rather than your own.
You notice friction that everyone else has learned to live with, and you fix it.
You're a genuine advocate for agentic engineering. You make the case for it with evidence, help teams adopt it well, and are honest about where it isn't the right tool.
You are opinionated about tooling and you change your mind when the evidence changes.
You are comfortable owning something long-lived rather than moving between projects.
You can tell the difference between a genuinely better tool and a fashionable one.
You are honest about trade-offs, including the ones in your own work.
Responsibilities
- As a Principal Software Engineer at Rowden, you will:
- Build the Internal Developer Platform: design, build, and run the platform that Rowden's software teams and their coding agents depend on to write, test, ship, and operate code.
- Own software engineering infrastructure and workflows end-to-end: source control, CI/CD, artefact management, secrets, and the environments our software runs in.
- Champion new tooling and best practice: track what the best engineering organisations are doing, evaluate it rigorously, and bring in whatever earns its place.
- Raise standards through influence: set technical direction and standards across teams you do not manage, by building things that people choose to use.
- Lead the implementation of agentic AI: roll out coding agents across engineering workflows and own how and where they're used.
- Advocate for agentic engineering across the business: run evaluations, evidence the benefits, and train teams on effective use.
- Build the infrastructure that makes agents trustworthy: sandboxing, permissioning, audit logging, and observability so that what an agent did is efficient, secure, and fully transparent to the engineer who has to stand behind it.
- Create repeatable development environments: make local, cloud, and target-representative environments reproducible, quick to stand up, and identical for every engineer.
- As a Principal Software Engineer at Rowden, you will: - Build the Internal Developer Platform: design, build, and run the platform that Rowden's software teams and their coding agents depend on to write, test, ship, and operate code. - Own software engineering infrastructure and workflows end-to-end: source control, CI/CD, artefact management, secrets, and the environments our software runs in. - Champion new tooling and best practice: track what the best engineering organisations are doing, evaluate it rigorously, and bring in whatever earns its place. - Raise standards through influence: set technical direction and standards across teams you do not manage, by building things that people choose to use. - Lead the implementation of agentic AI: roll out coding agents across engineering workflows and own how and where they're used. - Advocate for agentic engineering across the business: run evaluations, evidence the benefits, and train teams on effective use. - Build the infrastructure that makes agents trustworthy: sandboxing, permissioning, audit logging, and observability so that what an agent did is efficient, secure, and fully transparent to the engineer who has to stand behind it. - Create repeatable development environments: make local, cloud, and target-representative environments reproducible, quick to stand up, and identical for every engineer.
About Rowden Technologies
UK engineering company developing resilient edge technology and integrated systems for defence, national security and emergency response organisations.
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