Senior Principal Software Engineer Java

Senior Principal Software Engineer Java Overview

Anaplan is hiring a Senior Principal Software Engineer focused on Java for its Manchester, United Kingdom team. This role sits within a company that builds an AI-enhanced scenario planning and analysis platform used by large enterprises around the world to improve decision-making at scale. The position is aimed at a senior technical leader who can shape platform direction, build resilient backend systems, and help drive engineering excellence across distributed teams.

The organization describes itself as a place where innovation, customer success, and a strong internal culture are central. Its platform supports thousands of global companies, and the engineering team works on systems that must perform reliably under heavy enterprise traffic while supporting modern cloud-native deployment practices and a fast-moving product environment.

What you will do

• Take the lead on the architecture, design, and delivery of platform capabilities that power enterprise API gateways, edge routing, and tools that improve developer productivity.
• Build and scale backend services that manage request orchestration, maintain isolation between tenants, and support API-first products serving very large numbers of users and customers.
• Work alongside architects and senior engineers in the Platform Experience area to define technical direction and align implementation patterns for complex initiatives such as vanity URLs, JWT authentication flows, and cross-service proxying.
• Help evolve deployment and release infrastructure by promoting modern GitOps practices, including the use of ArgoCD and Helm, and by supporting highly available container orchestration.
• Own important platform features from the earliest design stages through production rollout and ongoing operation.
• Improve observability across the platform, introduce smarter rate-limiting approaches, and solve difficult concurrency and scaling problems such as database locking and connection starvation.
• Provide strong technical leadership through high-quality implementation in Java and Kotlin, and ensure backend microservices integrate smoothly with UI components and distributed edge proxy requirements, including CORS-related issues.
• Mentor engineers across global teams through design reviews, pair programming, and direct hands-on support, helping build a resilient and high-performing engineering culture.

What the company is looking for

• Extensive software engineering experience in enterprise environments where systems must handle high throughput, especially in platform or data-heavy contexts.
• Strong familiarity with modern AI tools and concepts, including agentic programming approaches and LLM-assisted workflows, and the ability to use them to improve platform engineering and developer productivity.
• Deep backend expertise in JVM languages, especially Java and/or Kotlin, along with a strong understanding of how distributed systems work internally.
• A proven record of building API-first infrastructure, API gateways such as Traefik, and edge routing solutions that remain dependable under sustained load of more than 2,000 requests per second.
• Practical experience with Kubernetes, container-based deployments, and sophisticated CI/CD pipelines, with solid knowledge of GitOps, ArgoCD, and rapid release workflows.
• Good understanding of event-driven systems, real-time data processing, and how to manage database transaction boundaries at scale.
• The ability to balance fast experimentation and iteration with long-term maintainability and quality, with a bias toward action rather than waiting for perfect information.
• Excellent communication skills and a demonstrated ability to explain complex ideas clearly in structured RFCs and architecture documents that help globally distributed teams align.
• Comfort working across time zones and collaborating effectively with teams spread around the world.

Preferred experience and qualities

• Experience influencing architecture and platform strategy at enterprise scale, including understanding the trade-offs involved in hybrid and cloud-agnostic environments.
• A polyglot approach to technology selection, with the ability to choose the right tool for the problem rather than relying on a single stack; familiarity with React, Python, or Go is a plus.
• Curiosity and enthusiasm for learning new technologies and approaches to solve edge routing and platform enablement problems.
• A genuine interest in mentoring others and improving engineering standards without ego.
• Comfort with asynchronous collaboration and with building consensus across different domains and distributed teams.

Team culture and environment

Anaplan emphasizes a “Winning Culture” built around customer success, diversity of thought, leadership regardless of title, ambitious goals, and celebration of achievements both large and small. The company says its operating principles are strategy-led, values-based, and disciplined in execution, and that employees should expect to be inspired, connected, developed, and rewarded.

The company also states that it values diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and that it aims to create a workplace where people are respected and valued regardless of gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, neurodiversity, disability status, citizenship, or other personal characteristics. Candidates and employees with disabilities can request reasonable accommodations for the application process, interviews, essential job functions, and employment benefits.

Additional notes

The posting includes a fraud warning explaining that genuine Anaplan hiring communications will come through a formal interview process and that official email correspondence should come from an anaplan.com address. If someone has doubts about a message claiming to be from the company, they are directed to contact the company by email before taking further action.

The application form asks candidates to confirm whether they are legally authorized to work in the country where the role is based and whether they will need visa sponsorship now or in the future. However, the posting itself does not say whether sponsorship is available or unavailable for this role.

How to apply

Applicants are invited to submit their details through the online application form. The form requests standard information such as name, email, phone number, resume or CV, LinkedIn profile, and work authorization and visa sponsorship status, along with address and other legal name details required for processing the application.

Degree Requirement: Not Specified

Visa Sponsorship May be