Principal AI Platform Engineer

Working at CreateFuture CreateFuture is an AI-native consulting partner where people do work that matters and are supported to do it well. We work alongside organisations such as PayPal, adidas, NatWest, FanDuel and Money Saving Expert, building digital products and services that make a difference while always putting people first. We’re a team of creators. We write code, shape delivery, build go-to-market strategies, develop AI solutions and create the practices that support our people. We work side by side with our clients, challenging what’s not working and helping them to build the future. Our commitment to craft, quality, and culture has helped us scale to over 600 people in just a few years. Our UK Benefits 35 days leave (including bank holidays). Private medical insurance. Enhanced parental and adoption leave. Financial coaching + 5% pension match. 40 hours of paid learning and development. View our full list of UK benefits. CreateFuture is a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company and has won Best Workplaces UK multiple years in a row. Join us on our journey. Let’s create tomorrow, together, today. About the role and team: You'll join our AI Platform Engineering team, which builds and runs the infrastructure connecting CreateFuture's engineers and client workloads to multiple LLM providers — from the inference control plane (the API gateway and routing layer for Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, OpenAI, and others) through to the orchestration and lifecycle tooling that turns individual AI integrations into a reusable 'capability marketplace', and the trust, safety, and governance controls that keep it all auditable as it scales. We're hiring across this team at several levels — Principal, Senior, and Mid: Principal engineers set technical direction for the platform and act as a trusted extension of the CreateFuture leadership team day to day; Senior engineers own delivery of key platform components, from the gateway through to orchestration; and Mid-level engineers build hands-on experience across the gateway, orchestration, and governance layers, with support from senior colleagues. What you'll be doing: Build, run, and evolve the API gateway and routing layer connecting engineers and client workloads to multiple LLM providers (Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, OpenAI), including the failover and routing strategies you may need to defend in an incident. Design and build orchestration and lifecycle management for AI capabilities and agents, including the tooling that lets teams register, discover, and reuse capabilities rather than rebuilding them. Implement and maintain RBAC/OIDC access controls and disciplined API key lifecycle management across the platform. Build caching layers and cost/latency optimisation strategies, and the adoption and reuse analytics that show whether the platform is actually being used. Contribute to API design, versioning, and promotion workflows as capabilities move from experimental to production — with more senior engineers setting these standards and more junior engineers learning and applying them. Bring a trust, safety, and governance lens to the platform, helping ensure the agents and capabilities running on it are well-governed, auditable, and safe to scale. We'd love to talk to you if you: Are proficient in Python or Go, with production experience appropriate to your level — from hands-on delivery (Mid) through to setting technical direction (Principal). Have production experience running API gateways (Kong preferred; Envoy or Apigee accepted), or are keen to build this experience. Have integrated with, or are curious about, multiple LLM providers (Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, OpenAI), including failover and routing strategies you've had to defend under pressure. Understand, or want to build expertise in, RBAC/OIDC and disciplined API key lifecycle management. Are familiar with, or interested in, MCP or comparable service-registry patterns — a strong signal at any level. What we’ll offer you: We trust people to do their best work. That means flexibility over rigid rules, impact over activity, and real investment in your growth both professionally and personally. You’ll be part of a supportive, and friendly culture, surrounded by smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do. We offer flexible working, including hybrid and remote options. Our office hubs are located in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, London and Bulgaria, with occasional travel to client sites or CreateFuture offices when needed. We trust you to manage your time balancing collaboration with client time and focused work. What matters is the impact you have, not how busy you look. Our hiring process We try to keep our hiring process clear, fair and respectful of your time. We aim to get back to everyone who applies and we will be upfront about where you are in the process. It usually looks like this: Call with our Talent Acquisition Team Role specific capability interview Depending on the role, we might also ask you to do a short presentation, a practical or technical task or have a values focused conversation. We will explain what is involved before anything happens. Inclusion at CreateFuture We believe diverse teams build better workplaces and better products. We want CreateFuture to be a place where people feel able to be themselves and do their best work. If you need any adjustments or support during the application process, just. We will do what we can to help. We look forward to your application!