Principal Software Engineer (Java)

Anaplan is the leading enterprise decision-making platform, powering the world’s largest enterprises with our proprietary Hyperblock™ technology and cloud infrastructure. We are seeking a Principal Engineer to join our team in Manchester, UK. 

Your Impact

• Lead the design, delivery, and architecture of platform capabilities powering Anaplan’s enterprise-scale API gateways, edge routing, and developer acceleration.
• Build and scale high-throughput backend engines that manage core request orchestration, seamless multi-tenant isolation, and API-first solutions serving thousands of tenants and tens of thousands of users.
• Partner with architects and senior engineers across the Platform Experience domain to set technical direction, aligning implementation patterns for complex initiatives (like Vanity URLs, JWT auth flows, and cross-service proxying).
• Drive the evolution of our deployment infrastructure, championing modern GitOps workflows (ArgoCD, Helm) and highly available containerized orchestration.
• Own foundational features end-to-end—from design through to production—while continuously improving system observability, implementing intelligent rate-limiting, and solving complex concurrency challenges (e.g., database locks and connection starvation).
• Deliver thought leadership and coding excellence across Java/Kotlin, ensuring seamless integration between backend microservices and UI components (including resolving complex CORS and distributed edge proxy requirements).
• Mentor and elevate engineers across global teams through design reviews, pair programming, and hands-on leadership to foster a resilient engineering culture.

Your Qualifications

• Extensive background in software engineering within enterprise-scale, high-throughput platform or data-centric environments.
• Understand, leverage, and integrate modern AI tools and concepts—including agentic programming patterns and LLM-assisted workflows—to accelerate platform engineering and developer velocity.
• Deep expertise in backend JVM languages (Java and/or Kotlin) with a strong understanding of distributed systems internals.
• Proven track record of delivering API-first infrastructures, API Gateways (e.g., Traefik), and edge routing solutions that guarantee enterprise reliability under sustained traffic loads (2K+ requests per second).
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, containerized deployments, and managing complex CI/CD pipelines (strong familiarity with GitOps, ArgoCD, and high-velocity release workflows).
• Solid grounding in event-driven architecture, real-time data processing, and managing complex database transaction scopes at scale.
• Experience balancing rapid prototyping and fast iteration with long-term sustainability and quality—you have a bias for action and prefer to try and iterate rather than wait for perfect information.
• Exceptional technical communicator with a proven ability to align globally distributed teams. You are highly skilled at distilling complex concepts into clear, structured RFCs and architectural designs to build consensus.
• Understand, leverage, and integrate modern AI tools and concepts—including agentic programming patterns and LLM-assisted workflows—to accelerate platform engineering and developer velocity.

Preferred Skills

• You have shaped architecture and platform strategy at an enterprise scale, navigating the trade-offs of hybrid and cloud-agnostic infrastructures.
• You bring a polyglot mindset, matching the right technology to the challenge rather than defaulting to a single stack (comfortable exploring React, Python, or Go when needed).
• Genuine curiosity—you're energized by learning new technologies and approaches to solve edge routing and platform enablement challenges.
• You enjoy mentoring others and raising the bar for engineering culture, without big egos.
• You're highly comfortable operating in distributed teams, embracing asynchronous collaboration, and driving consensus across distinct domains.

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