Principal Engineer - Platform Foundations

In short

Everything we build in Technology at On fuels our mission to ignite the human spirit through movement. We craft technology that improves with every interaction. Delivering "Wow" through our platforms, apps, and services is a core value. As the Principal Engineer for Platform Foundations, you are the hands-on technical leader for our infrastructure. Acting as the Individual Contributor (IC) counterpart to the Director of Technology, you are the primary architect and hands-on lead for the systems that empower every engineer at On. You design the "Golden Path”, ensuring our bedrock is rapid, secure, and resilient.

Your Mission

As the technical catalyst for On’s platform evolution, your mission is to transform our cloud landscape into a streamlined, high-performance engine. You will accelerate On's platform maturity by translating strategic blueprints into technical reality, spearheading a future anchored in Intelligent Operations and self-managing, Autonomous Scalability.

• Architect the Foundation: Lead the design of a highly autonomous platform where operational friction is eliminated through declarative service contracts and IaC-first principles
• GCP Transformation: Serve as the technical authority for our strategic shift to Google Cloud, architecting a scalable, multi-region foundation that ensures global resilience
• DevEx as the Engine: Champion the "Golden Path" by building a world-class Internal Developer Portal (IDP) that makes the right way to build also the easiest way to build
• Servant Leadership: Act as a mentor and guide across multiple teams, leading by example in the trenches while making the right architectural trade-offs

Your story

• Engineering Excellence: You have 10+ years of experience evolving complex engineering cultures. You are a "builder" who believes in internal ownership and leading technical decision-making across multiple teams
• Platform Product Mindset: You treat your platform as a product. You have a track record of creating intuitive developer portals (IDPs) and tools that reduce cognitive load for product teams
• Cloud Authority: You possess deep expertise in cloud architecture (We use GCP). Specific experience leading cloud migrations and designing multi-region, resilient foundations is a critical differentiator
• Edge Engineering: You have deep experience architecting for high-performance including Edge/CDNs, API Gateways, and Service Mesh. You view the edge not just as a delivery layer, but as a critical component for security, traffic shaping, and ensuring minimum latency
• Standardised Service Scaffolding: You have experience architecting "Golden Path" templates that embed observability, security, and testing into the service lifecycle. While our core stack is Node.js, TypeScript, and React, you are comfortable across languages and eager to integrate agentic workflows and AI-driven code generation to scale productivity
• Hands-on Mentor: You are a servant leader. You enjoy being in the code and on the command line, coaching teams to improve operational excellence and helping them identify complex architectural trade-offs

What to expect

We want to set everyone up for success, so here’s the lowdown on how we hire. Our process is a two-way street – bringing you into our culture, while helping us learn how you think.

Our full process can last about eight weeks from application to offer, because we care about getting it right. These steps explain how we usually do things.

Before you get started, feel free to consider if you want to work with us. Strange question? Well, we give people a lot of space to navigate their day-to-day and that style isn't for everyone. We want you to be passionate about what you do and be sure this is the right fit. Because when skills and passion combine – it creates that 'Wow' moment.

• Step One

  It starts with you...

  You'll start by submitting your application to a specific role. We try to keep this step as simple as possible. We do get a lot of applications, but we review them all. If you're a good fit to the role, a recruiter will follow up with you directly. If you didn't receive a reply, or were unsuccessful this time around, we encourage you to look for other possible matches at On.

• Step Two

  Interview with a recruiter

  What ignites your spirit? This is where we’ll start getting to know all about you and what makes you tick – and it’s your first chance to get a feel for our culture. Chatting with a member of our talent team, you’ll learn more about On and how we work. We’ll learn about what motivates you and what you could bring to the team.

• Step Three

  Interview with a hiring manager

  Ready to dig into the details? This second interview will be held with your future manager and will focus on the specifics of the job. Together you’ll delve into your unique skills and experiences and how they could be relevant at On. It's also a time to assess how you might feel working side-by-side. Bring any questions you have about the job, the team or anything else you might like to know – this is an open forum.

• Step Four

  The Case Study

  What's your style? This task will help us understand how you think, face a challenge and give insight into your novel ideas. Designed to give everyone their best shot, your case study is based on something you might typically experience on the job. This is your chance to show us what you’ve got. So express yourself. Be you.

• Step Five

  The Experience Day

  Your first taste of the Oniverse. This is a time to meet some of the people you'll be working closest with. In person or virtually, you'll get a feel for the day-to-day at On and the people who make it happen. You'll chat with a few potential teammates - the conversations will be as equally driven by the role and your experience as by our values. We believe how you do things is just as important as what you do.

• Step Six

  The Result

  Are we a good fit? We’ll get together internally to share our feedback and decide if we’re a match. We know that job searching is a big time investment, so it’s not a decision we take lightly. It’s also time for you to reflect on the experience – are we the right place for you? No matter the outcome, we’ll give you meaningful feedback.

Step One:

It starts with you...

You'll start by submitting your application to a specific role.

We try to keep this step as simple as possible. We do get a lot of applications, but we review them all. If you're a good fit to the role, a recruiter will follow up with you directly. If you didn't receive a reply, or were unsuccessful this time around, we encourage you to look for other possible matches at On.