Principal Engineer – Corporate IT

About Us

Globally acknowledged for its trustworthiness, integrity, and accuracy, the Financial Times is a leading news organisation. It aims to offer quality information and services internationally.

At the FT, curiosity flourishes and ambitious thinking is appreciated. Here, you’re given the chance to reach millions, create work that matters and deliver impartial journalism in a polarised world.

In our warm, collaborative culture, you’ll connect with a diverse community of experts who support your growth, career aspirations, and wellbeing.

Your future at the FT will be filled with opportunities that challenge and motivate you. With no set route, you’ll uncover new skills and build a career that can lead you anywhere.

Develop a newsworthy career at the FT.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We believe in the strength of diverse viewpoints and want every voice in our organisation to be acknowledged, respected, and appreciated. A nurturing workplace is one where employees feel free to be themselves and perform at their highest potential. We are dedicated to eliminating obstacles for all, particularly focusing on challenges encountered by underrepresented groups.

The Role

Corporate Technology is part of Internal Products and manages the technology solutions that support several of the FT’s key internal business functions, including People, Finance, and Procurement. This area encompasses significant enterprise platforms like Oracle Fusion and Workday, as well as specialized platforms, integrations, data flows, and in-house developed tools.

As Principal Engineer – Corporate Technology, you will lead senior engineering efforts across this area. You will define the engineering strategy for the domain and collaborate with Engineering Leads and senior engineers. Together, you will ensure our platforms and services remain secure, resilient, scalable, well managed, and adaptable to business needs.

A key part of the role is to establish and enhance a solid engineering leadership approach across Corporate Technology. You will assign clear ownership and accountability to individual platforms. You will also offer technical direction, mentoring, and oversight to maintain a unified and sustainable technology infrastructure.

Partnering with Product, Architecture, Security, Data, and senior participants from People, Finance, and Procurement, you will develop technology strategy and roadmaps. You will find opportunities to simplify and modernise the estate. You will lead engineering for large-scale transformation efforts.

Key Responsibilities

• Define the engineering vision for Corporate Technology covering People, Finance, and Procurement platforms and services, converting FT and Internal Products technology strategy into specific priorities and roadmaps.
• Deliver senior technical direction across enterprise platforms, integrations, data flows, and internally developed capabilities.
• Work with Architecture and Engineering Leads to establish appropriate technical standards, patterns, and guardrails, ensuring significant decisions consider security, resilience, scalability, operability, maintainability, and cost.
• Recognize systemic technical risks, lifecycle challenges, technical debt, and possibilities to simplify the technology estate, cut down on duplication, and boost interoperability.
• Ensure Engineering Leads have clear accountability for the engineering, operation, and continuous improvement of their platforms, with consistent expectations for engineering quality and technical ownership.
• Support complex technical decisions and issues spanning multiple platforms, while creating appropriate autonomy for Engineering Leads.
• Direct and cultivate Engineering Leads and senior engineers, improving technical judgement, platform ownership, succession, and specialist capability across the domain.
• Offer senior engineering direction for key People, Finance, and Procurement technology efforts, ensuring new capabilities are transferred into lasting internal stewardship.
• Support platform selection, implementation, and major technology investment decisions, challenging approaches that introduce unnecessary complexity, operational risk, or long-term dependency.
• Maintain oversight of operational performance and technology risk, including reliability, observability, incident and change management, disaster recovery, and business continuity.
• Ensure platforms meet relevant FT security, data governance, compliance, and technology standards.
• Strengthen internal capability and knowledge to reduce unnecessary reliance on individual specialists, vendors, and implementation partners.
• Build strong relationships across People, Finance, Procurement, Product, and Technology, helping collaborators understand technical trade-offs, risks, and investment requirements.
• Collaborate with Architecture, Security, Data, and other engineering leaders on decisions that span organisational or technology boundaries, representing Corporate Technology in relevant FT engineering and technology forums.