Principal Engineer, Platform at Smartly | AdTechTalent
Engineering2 months agoRemote
Smartly
Principal Engineer, Platform
principal engineerplatformdistributed systemsrelational databasesscalabilityreliabilityAI agentscloudinfrastructurementoringarchitecturetechnical leadership
Key details
Salary
Not specified
Employment type
Full-time
Seniority
Senior
Years experience
5-10
Location
Helsinki, Finland
Full job description
Principal Engineer role in the Platform Group responsible for guiding teams through complex technical challenges, shaping technical direction, and driving initiatives to improve scalability, reliability, and developer productivity. The role involves ownership of foundational systems including large-scale databases, distributed systems, infrastructure, and platform services. Reporting to the Chief Architect, the engineer will collaborate with engineering teams and product leaders. Responsibilities include advising on technical vision and strategy, executing architecture and design, leading cross-team projects, addressing system bottlenecks, mentoring engineers, and participating in recruitment. Requirements include 3+ years at senior technical leadership levels, proven multi-team initiative leadership, 5+ years with production relational database systems, strong distributed systems knowledge, and excellent communication skills. Bonus points for experience with analytical databases, cloud infrastructure, AI agent integration, and reliability engineering. The position offers a hybrid work model based in Helsinki, Finland, with benefits including healthcare, equity, flexible work, and career development.
What you'll do
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Advise and drive Smartly's technical vision and strategy, setting and upholding high standards for technical quality, scalability, and operational excellence
Drive execution through architecture, design, and hands-on technical contributions, delivering large-scale technical initiatives
Remain actively involved in design reviews, prototyping, incident analysis, and implementation of critical technical components
Lead complex cross-team projects advancing platform architecture and long-term technical vision
Identify and address scalability, reliability, observability and performance bottlenecks across critical systems
Share learnings and knowledge across the organization, mentor engineers and raise engineering standards
Participate in recruitment process and help maintain consistently high engineering standards across teams
Requirements
3+ years operating at Staff, Principal, Lead Engineer, or equivalent level, driving technical strategy across multiple teams
Proven track record leading multi-quarter technical initiatives spanning 3+ engineering teams and delivering measurable improvements in scalability, reliability, developer productivity, or operational efficiency
5+ years operating production systems where relational database architecture, scalability, reliability, and performance were critical concerns (e.g. 99.9%+ availability targets)
Strong understanding of distributed systems and experience making architectural decisions involving consistency, availability, partition tolerance, replication and sharding
Demonstrated success influencing technical direction without direct managerial authority
High bar for quality of code, testing, and quality of user experience
Ability to communicate complex technical topics clearly to a wide range of stakeholders
Ability to listen well and internalize the best ideas from across the organization while also setting a vision that others are excited to get behind
Tech stack
AI agentsdistributed systemsrelational databasesshardingreplicationClickHouseBigQuerySnowflakecloud platformsinfrastructure
Benefits
Inclusive global culture with over 750 employees from 60+ nationalities across 24 locations in 13 countriesGlobal impact influencing customers' success and business growthHealthcare packages and mental health servicesWork-life balance with paid holidays and family leaveEquity options and performance-based rewardsCompetitive compensation and career development opportunitiesFlexible hybrid workplace with option to work abroad for up to 30 days annually
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