{"id":18505,"url":"https://alion.io/job/the-very-group-principal-platform-engineer","title":"Principal Platform Engineer","company":{"id":5371,"name":"The Very Group","domain":"very.co.uk","url":"https://alion.io/company/the-very-group","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workable","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":3,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":34,"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"}},"role":"DevOps","role_family":"DevOps","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Liverpool, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":80000,"max_usd":146000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":30},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Bash","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-30T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-06-30","last_verified_at":"2026-11-05T05:10:33Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":128,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":128},"description":"Internal use only - Grade E\nAbout us.\nWe’re the team behind digital retailer Very.\nOur purpose, helping families get more out of life, powers everything we do.\nAnd we want our people to get more out of life too! If you’re high-performing, ambitious and make the most of every opportunity, we want to hear from you. In return, you’ll enjoy heaps of flexibility, great perks and benefits, and the freedom to be yourself, keep learning and take your career wherever you want it to go.\nIf you love making a difference, you’ll love making it sparkle for millions of Very customers.\nAbout the role\nAt Very, great engineering doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built on strong foundations, smart tooling and platforms that make it easier to move fast and do things right.\nThis role sits right at the heart of that.\nAs a Principal Platform Engineer, you’ll shape the platforms that hundreds of engineers rely on every day. You’ll make it faster to build, safer to release and easier to scale. The impact of your work will be felt across every product, every team and every customer experience we deliver.\nIf you enjoy solving complex problems, improving how things work and seeing your ideas adopted at scale, you’ll feel right at home here.\nThis is a role with real reach.\nYou’ll be designing and evolving the core platform that underpins our engineering ecosystem. Your customers are internal, but your impact goes far beyond that. When you improve the platform, you improve everything we build on top of it.\nYou’ll have the space to experiment, the backing to introduce better ways of working and the influence to raise the bar for engineering across the business.\nYou won’t just keep things running. You’ll make them better, simpler and more resilient.\nWhat you will work on\nShape and evolve our cloud infrastructure so it’s secure, scalable and built for reuse \nMake it easier for engineers to build and release by improving CI/CD pipelines and automation \nReduce friction and manual effort by introducing smarter tooling and eliminating toil \nSolve complex platform challenges and guide teams through them with practical, hands-on support \nConnect systems, platforms and services so they work seamlessly together \nSpot opportunities to improve performance, reliability and developer experience and make them happen \nChampion modern engineering practices and help teams adopt them with confidence \nAbout You\nYou’re someone who enjoys getting underneath the surface of complex systems and figuring out how to make them work better.\nYou’re comfortable balancing hands-on engineering with bigger-picture thinking, and you naturally look for ways to improve how things are done.\nYou’ll bring:\nStrong troubleshooting skills and a curiosity for how systems behave in the real world \nExperience working with cloud infrastructure, automation and configuration management \nA solid background in scripting or programming, whether that’s Java, Python, Bash or similar \nConfidence working across Linux environments, networking fundamentals and integrated systems \nAn understanding of CI/CD and version control, and how they come together to support great delivery \nExperience working in complex environments where scale, reliability and dependencies really matter.\nSome of our benefits\nFlexible, hybrid working model \nInclusive culture and environment\n£1,000 flexible benefits allowance to suit your needs \n30 days holiday + bank holidays \nUp to 25% discount on Very.co.uk \nMatched pension up to 6% \nMore benefits can be found on our career site \nHow to apply\nPlease note that the talent acquisition team are managing this vacancy directly, and if successful in securing this role, you will be required to undertake a credit, CIFAS, Right to Work checks and if a specific requirement of your role a DBS (criminal records) check. Should your application progress we require you to let the team know if there is anything you need to disclose in relation to any of these checks prior to them being undertaken, including any unspent criminal convictions.\nWhat happens next?\nOur Talent Acquisition team will be in touch if you’re successful so keep an eye on your emails! We’ll arrange a short call to learn more about you, as well as answer any questions you have.\nFor this role after meeting our Talent Acquisition Team you can expect a 2 stage process.\nFirst Stage - A Technical Interview - likely to be on Teams\nSecond Stage - Behavioural Interview, this interview focuses more on your softer skills, how you like to work as part of a Software Engineering Team (60 minutes onsite)\nIf you'd like to know more about our interviews, you can find out here.\nDiversity, inclusion and equal opportunities\nWe’re building a culture of everyday inclusion, and welcome applications from anyone who believes they can do the job. We don’t discriminate based on age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.\nWe want our recruitment process to be accessible to everyone. If you need reasonable adjustments to apply, interview, or perform a role, let us know via . We’ll be happy to support you.\nWe’re proud to be a Disability Confident Committed Employer and have nine brilliant colleague networks - including DAWN (Disability Awareness at Very) and Think (Neurodiversity at Very) - that are helping us make Very an even more inclusive place to work.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5452,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["E-commerce Platforms"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-06-30T00:00:00Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":12,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.426,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":128,"expected_fill_days":34,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/the-very-group-principal-platform-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/the-very-group-principal-platform-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-05T07:40:36Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":9699,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-06T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":5371},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=5371"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fthe-very-group-principal-platform-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fthe-very-group-principal-platform-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fthe-very-group-principal-platform-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/the-very-group-principal-platform-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fthe-very-group-principal-platform-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":18505}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"very.co.uk","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":18505},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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