Principal Software Engineer, Platform Modernization (Remote, United Kingdom)

Job Summary: JOB DESCRIPTION – Principal Software Engineer, Platform Modernization Location: Remote, United Kingdom Division: Ticketmaster Contract Terms: Permanent, full-time THE TEAM The Platform Modernization team builds software systems that improve the delivery, operations, and scalability of our infrastructure platform. The team is actively shipping and building the next generation of infrastructure self-service platforms at Ticketmaster. As a core part of our infrastructure strategy, the team builds internal tooling and automation platforms that reduce toil, accelerate delivery, and improve the developer and operator experience across the company. We leverage modern backend languages, Cloud-Native technologies, and infrastructure-as-code to empower service teams to manage their own environments with confidence and efficiency. THE JOB Are you passionate about building software that ships, gets adopted, and permanently changes how engineers work? We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join our Platform Modernization team. You will be the most senior engineer on the team and set the technical direction for a group of 2 lead engineers and 1 senior engineer. You are the technical anchor -- the person who enables the team to self-direct on implementation while you own architectural decisions and technical strategy. In this role, you'll architect and implement automation tools and internal platforms that transform how our Infrastructure Group delivers and operates services. Your work will focus on delivering durable, maintainable software solutions that abstract infrastructure complexity and promote scale and autonomy. The products you'll work on are real and in progress: Self-service Kubernetes platform -- a UI, CLI, and API for infrastructure consumers to manage namespaces, network policies, and deployments across on-prem and cloud clusters Infrastructure inventory and CRUD APIs -- programmatic access to infrastructure state across on-prem and cloud Kubernetes clusters Deployment standardization tooling -- ring promotion, automated change management, and progressive rollout systems Internal developer portal integration -- service catalog, team intelligence, and operational dashboards LLM-assisted governance tooling -- automated merge request review against infrastructure standards This is an opportunity to shape platform strategy and build systems that have widespread internal impact across a 13-team infrastructure organization. What success looks like at 6 months: The team is self-directing on implementation with your architectural guidance. You've shaped the technical roadmap, shipped meaningful work on at least one of the products above, and built trust with the existing team. You go to management for product direction and priorities; you own the technical direction. The leads come to you for technical decisions, not your manager. You can escalate technical questions to management when you choose to, but you don't need to. WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING Tactical Work (40%) Design and implement backend systems that abstract infrastructure concerns and enable self-service capabilities. Own the development and support of internal tools, APIs, and automation frameworks used by infrastructure and application teams. Drive enhancements to CI/CD pipelines using GitLab, focusing on security, repeatability, and observability. Solutions Architecture (35%) Define backend architectures and patterns that scale across infrastructure domains. Create design documents, system diagrams, and proof-of-concepts that guide development and integration. Leverage Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code tools to deliver reusable software components and automation services. Strategic Work (25%) Collaborate with senior stakeholders to align platform modernization initiatives with long-term goals. Guide technology direction and best practices across teams. Mentor engineers and foster a culture of strong backend engineering, maintainability, and continuous improvement. Over time, this role grows beyond the immediate team to provide technical advisory across infrastructure domains -- influencing architecture decisions, reviewing cross-team technical proposals, and serving as a go-to technical authority for the broader infrastructure organization. How We Work Software engineering approach to infrastructure: observability, testing, service ownership, and compliance baked in through automation -- not bolted on after. CLI tools, APIs, and services for internal platform consumers. Frontend (React/TypeScript) when needed, but not a core responsibility. Significant autonomy within an Agile (SAFe) environment. Management ensures strategic alignment; you own the technical execution. Routine on-call for critical services. You have full ownership to build reliability and availability into the systems from the start -- the team that builds it, runs it. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (or TECHNICAL SKILLS) Proven years of experience as a backend or plat