{"id":1595842,"url":"https://alion.io/job/financial-times-principal-engineer-integration-services","title":"Principal Engineer - Integration Services","company":{"id":11348,"name":"Financial Times","domain":"ft.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/financial-times","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":79,"open_postings":7,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.857,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":30,"computed_at":"2026-10-30T05:48:23Z"}},"role":"Industrial Engineering","role_family":"Industrial Engineering","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom","Sofia, Bulgaria"],"countries":["GB","BG"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":75000,"max_usd":125000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":109},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Incident Management","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-01T11:52:30Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-13","last_verified_at":"2026-10-30T07:21:48Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":28,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":28},"description":"About Us\nThe Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations, globally recognised for its authority, integrity and accuracy, with a mission to deliver quality information and services worldwide.\nAt the FT, curiosity thrives and ambitious thinking is rewarded. Together, we help audiences stay better informed and deepen their understanding of the world around them.\nOur Product & Tech teams drive us forward in an ever-evolving digital landscape, delivering cutting-edge products to over one million digital subscribers daily. Our growth relies on a diverse, dedicated and dynamic group of product, tech, delivery and data specialists.\nWith a supportive culture, entrepreneurial spirit and opportunities at every turn, there are no limits to where your FT career can take you.\nBuild a newsworthy career at the FT.\nOur commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion\nWe believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.\nAbout you\nYou are an experienced Principal Engineer or senior engineering leader with a strong background in enterprise integration, shared engineering services or platform capabilities.\nYou have experience working across multiple teams and technology domains, with the judgement to distinguish between capabilities that should be centrally owned and standardised and those that should remain within individual engineering teams.\nYou are comfortable operating at both strategic and technical levels. You can define a direction for shared integration and engineering capabilities while still engaging deeply enough with architecture, engineering practices, reliability and delivery to make credible technical decisions.\nYou are also an experienced people leader who can build and develop senior engineers and create a high-performing team around a new capability. You are able to influence teams without relying solely on formal authority and can establish common approaches where responsibilities have historically been distributed.\nYou understand that shared services succeed only when they are useful to the teams that depend on them. You therefore approach platform and integration engineering pragmatically, balancing standardisation and reuse with the needs of individual products and domains.\nAbout the team\nIntegration Services sits within Internal Products and provides shared engineering capabilities that enable connectivity, automation and engineering quality across the organisation.\nThe capability spans enterprise integrations, reusable engineering services and quality engineering practices that support multiple products, platforms and teams across Internal Products.\nAs the FT continues to evolve its enterprise technology landscape and undertake significant transformation, the need for consistent, reusable and reliable integration capabilities is increasing.\nTwo major programmes are currently running in parallel and both depend heavily on shared integration capabilities across multiple platforms and teams. At present, responsibilities are distributed across different parts of the organisation, creating risks around fragmented ownership, duplicated solutions, inconsistent approaches and limited reuse.\nThe Principal Engineer - Integration Services will establish and lead this capability, creating clear ownership for shared services while ensuring the team remains closely connected to the engineering teams and domains it supports.\nWhat you’ll work on\nAs Principal Engineer - Integration Services, you will establish and lead the Integration Services capability across Internal Products.\nYou will own the technical direction, engineering capability, people leadership, delivery and operational performance of shared integration and engineering services.\nA key part of the role will be defining what should become a reusable Internal Products capability and what should remain owned within individual domains. You will establish common integration approaches, reusable services and engineering patterns that reduce duplication and make it easier for teams to connect systems safely and reliably.\nYou will provide senior technical leadership across major transformation programmes, including the Commercial Technology Programme, ensuring integration decisions made within individual programmes contribute to a coherent and sustainable technology estate.\nYou will also build and develop the team itself, establishing the engineering capability, operating model and ways of working required for a successful shared service organisation.\nYour responsibilities will include\nIntegration Strategy & Technical Direction\nDefining the technical direction for integration services across Internal Products.\nEstablishing principles, standards and reusable patterns for enterprise integration.\nDeveloping a clear strategy for shared integration capabilities, balancing centralisation, reuse and domain autonomy.\nIdentifying opportunities to simplify integration architecture, reduce duplication and improve interoperability.\nProviding technical leadership on significant integration decisions spanning multiple platforms, teams and domains.\nEnsuring integration approaches consider security, resilience, scalability, observability, operability and long-term maintainability.\nWorking with Architecture and senior engineering leaders to align integration direction with wider FT technology strategy.\nEstablishing a clear view of the integration landscape, including major interfaces, dependencies, ownership and technical risks.\nShared Services & Platform Engineering\nDefining and building reusable integration services and engineering capabilities that solve common problems across Internal Products.\nEstablishing clear ownership for shared services and ensuring they have sustainable operational and engineering models.\nEnsuring shared capabilities provide genuine value to consuming teams rather than becoming additional layers of complexity.\nSetting appropriate expectations for reliability, performance, scalability, security and service availability.\nEstablishing effective lifecycle management for shared platforms and services.\nIdentifying opportunities for standardisation, consolidation and reuse.\nEnsuring teams have clear guidance on when to use shared services and when to build capability within their own domains.\nEngineering Quality & Automation\nEstablishing and evolving quality engineering capabilities that improve the reliability and confidence of software delivery across Internal Products.\nPromoting consistent engineering practices around testing, automation, CI/CD and quality assurance where appropriate.\nIdentifying recurring quality problems across teams and developing reusable approaches to address them.\nWorking with engineering leaders to improve automated testing, release confidence and software quality.\nEncouraging engineering teams to treat quality as part of engineering ownership rather than a separate activity.\nUsing metrics, operational insight and engineering feedback to identify opportunities for continuous improvement.\nStrategic Programmes & Transformation\nProviding senior engineering leadership to major transformation programmes, including the Commercial Technology Programme.\nWorking across programme teams to establish coherent integration strategies across multiple platforms and workstreams.\nChallenging programme-specific solutions where they create unnecessary duplication, complexity or long-term dependency.\nEnsuring integration decisions made during transformation can be sustainably operated and evolved after programme delivery ends.\nSupporting technology and vendor evaluations where integration architecture is a material consideration.\nHelping programmes distinguish between capabilities that should be delivered as reusable Internal Products services and those that are specific to an individual initiative.\nPeople & Engineering Leadership\nLeading and developing the engineers within Integration Services.\nEstablishing a high-performing team with clear responsibilities, strong engineering standards and appropriate technical ownership.\nCoaching senior engineers and developing technical leadership capability within the team.\nBuilding an environment that encourages collaboration, constructive technical challenge and knowledge sharing.\nRecruiting and developing the specialist skills required to build a sustainable integration capability.\nCreating succession and reducing key-person dependency across critical integration knowledge.\nEstablishing clear expectations for engineering quality, operational performance and delivery.\nBuilding strong relationships with engineering leaders across Internal Products so the shared capability is embedded rather than operating as a separate silo.\nDelivery & Planning\nEstablishing a roadmap for the development and evolution of shared integration services.\nPrioritising investment across reusable capabilities, programme commitments, operational work and technical improvement.\nWorking with Product and engineering leaders to understand demand for shared services and translate this into realistic delivery plans.\nManaging capacity and ensuring the team can support both strategic initiatives and ongoing operational responsibilities.\nIdentifying dependencies and delivery risks across consuming teams and programmes.\nProviding clear visibility of progress, risks, trade-offs and technical constraints.\nOperational Excellence & Reliability\nOwning the operational performance of shared integration services.\nEstablishing appropriate approaches to monitoring, observability, incident management, problem management and operational readiness.\nEnsuring critical integrations have clear ownership, appropriate resilience and effective recovery mechanisms.\nLeading the response to significant incidents affecting shared services and coordinating resolution across dependent teams.\nUsing operational data and incident learning to identify systemic improvements.\nEnsuring operational responsibilities are sustainable and do not depend disproportionately on individual engineers.\nCross-Domain Collaboration\nBuilding strong working relationships with Principal Engineers, Engineering Managers, architects and senior engineers across Internal Products.\nEstablishing effective mechanisms for teams to engage with Integration Services early in the lifecycle of significant initiatives.\nHelping teams understand integration trade-offs and select appropriate patterns and capabilities.\nCoordinating decisions where integration ownership crosses domain boundaries.\nEncouraging reuse and consistency without imposing unnecessary central control.\nRepresenting Integration Services in relevant architecture, engineering and technology forums across the FT.\nVendor & Technology Partner Management\nProviding technical leadership in relationships with integration technology vendors and implementation partners.\nChallenging vendor-led solutions where they conflict with long-term FT engineering direction or create unnecessary dependency.\nEnsuring external partners complement rather than replace internal engineering capability.\nContributing to technology evaluation, procurement and platform selection decisions.\nEnsuring partner-delivered work meets FT engineering, security, quality and operational expectations.\nTechnical and leadership experience we’re looking for\nSignificant experience in a Principal Engineer, senior engineering leadership or comparable technical leadership role.\nStrong experience designing, building and operating enterprise integration capabilities at scale.\nDeep understanding of integration architecture, APIs, event-driven systems, messaging, data flows and distributed systems.\nExperience establishing reusable engineering services or 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