Principal Engineer

Company Description

SGS is the world’s leading Testing, Inspection and Certification company. We operate a network of over 2,500 laboratories and business facilities across 115 countries, supported by a team of over 100,000 dedicated professionals. With more than 145 years of service excellence, we combine the precision and accuracy that define Swiss companies to help organizations achieve the highest standards of quality, compliance and sustainability.

Our brand promise – “when you need to be sure” – underscores our commitment to trust, integrity and reliability, enabling businesses to thrive with confidence. We proudly deliver our expert services through the SGS name and a portfolio of trusted specialized brands, including Applied Technical Services, Brightsight, Bluesign and Nutrasource.

Job Description

You’re the rare engineer who can both design a system and write the React component that lives on top of it. Join us to architect and build our flagship products end-to-end, while shaping the platform that makes the whole team move faster.

The Mission

As a Principal Engineer with a Full Stack & Platform mandate, your dual mission is to:

1) Act as the lead architect and hands-on builder for our most ambitious customer-facing products, owning everything from frontend architecture to backend services.

2) Identify the patterns, components, and platform capabilities that emerge from that work (the design system, the paved road, the reusable services) and turn them into building blocks for the whole engineering org.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead by Building: Architect and personally ship the most critical product surfaces, setting the bar for end-to-end engineering quality.
• Own the Full Stack: Make sound decisions across frontend, backend, and infrastructure, and write code at every layer when needed.
• Build the Paved Road: Shape our platform (CI/CD, Kubernetes, IaC, observability) so other engineers ship faster and more safely.
• Harvest Reusable Patterns: Generalize what works into shared components, services, and architectural patterns — extending both the design system and the platform.
• Multiply Velocity: Mentor senior engineers, lead architecture conversations, and remove friction wherever it slows the team down.

Qualifications

Technical Requirements:

• Full Stack Mastery: Expert-level React/TypeScript on the frontend, and deep experience building distributed backends in Go, Python, or TypeScript.
• Cloud & IaC: Hands-on, architectural-level experience with a major cloud (GCP, AWS) and Terraform. You don’t just use it; you architect with it.
• Containers & CI/CD: Strong knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes, and modern CI/CD pipelines built from scratch (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI).
• Systems Design: Proven track record designing distributed, cloud-native systems that are scalable, resilient, and observable.
• Product Sensibility: Experience partnering with Product and Design to ship interfaces that users actually love.
• Observability & Quality: Practical experience with observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger) and testing strategies that scale.

Who You Are

• You have 10+ years of experience, with strong backgrounds in both product engineering and platform/SRE work.
• You are a builder first. You don’t run architecture review boards, you write the code that makes them unnecessary.
• You believe the best architecture is the simplest one that works, and that great products and great platforms are built by the same kind of mindset.
• You measure your success by the velocity, autonomy, and pride of the engineers around you.

Additional Information

Why SGS?

• Opportunity to work with a global leader in inspection, verification, testing, and certification.
• Collaborative and inclusive work environment.
• Competitive salary and benefits package.
• Opportunities for professional growth and development.

Join Us: At SGS, we are dedicated to fostering an open, friendly, and supportive culture that thrives on teamwork. We value diversity and provide endless opportunities to learn, grow your expertise, and fulfill your potential.