Senior Principal Engineer

Senior Principal Engineer

Location: Hybrid, Dublin

Company: Bentley Systems

Position Summary: We are seeking a Senior Principal Engineer to define and own the end to end technical architecture of the Bentley Developer Platform, which includes the front end developer experience, the API gateway, standards, authentication, metering, and billing infrastructure that powers Bentley's portfolio of developer APIs and MCP servers. This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will set the architectural direction for the platform, write production code, review pull requests, and act as the senior technical authority the engineering team relies on for difficult decisions. You will also work closely with both the Product team to set the API standards along with engineering teams across the API portfolio to develop and maintain the platform's API design standards, security models, and integration patterns. If you're an engineer who enjoys both deep technical work and influencing standards across a global organization, this role offers significant scope and impact.

Responsibilities:

• Define the architecture of the developer platform, including the API gateway, authentication, metering, billing integration, and settlement, ensuring it is sound, extensible, and cloud-native from the outset.
• Own the end-to-end platform architecture from the developer experience through to the registry, including all aspects of commercialization, adoption, support, monitoring, and analytics.
• Work with the Product team to set API standards that will allow for monitoring, authentication, metering, and registration.
• Write production code and review pull requests; remain the senior hands-on technical contributor on the team and unblock engineers on the critical path.
• Serve as the primary technical interface between the Developer Platform, Product & Technology and product engineering teams, building credibility as the go-to person for platform questions.
• Jointly develop and publish API Design Standards v1, working collaboratively with product teams so that standards reflect the technical reality of what those teams are building and are adopted in practice.
• Own platform standards and governance: define the telemetry schema, maintain hub listing requirements, and establish the security and integration patterns applied across all API families.
• Establish IMS OAuth as the standard authentication model across all platform surfaces.
• Define and document migration paths for existing APIs to meet platform standards.
• Ensure AI and MCP surfaces are first-class citizens in the platform architecture and taxonomy, with documented agent integration patterns alongside traditional REST APIs.
• Partner with the Engineering Manager on technical hiring, team structure, and delivery sequencing.
• Partner with the CIO organization on enterprise application and ERP integration and unified architecture.

Qualifications:

• 12+ years of software engineering experience and significant time spent architecting large-scale systems.
• Proven ability to own the comprehensive developer platform architecture spanning from the front-end developer experience down to the API registry encompassing commercialization, adoption, support and analytics.
• Demonstrated experience partnering closely with Product teams to define and establish global API standards that enable monitoring, authentication, metering and registration.
• Experience managing enterprise IT architectures coupled with a proven track record of building and shipping custom, customer-facing API-driven software.
• Strong technical expertise in OAuth 2.0 / OIDC, token handling, and underlying platform security models.
• Hands-on experience engineering distributed systems, event streaming, API gateways, routing, usage-based billing pipelines, and ERP/settlement integrations.
• Unique blend of hands-on coding ability and the communication skills to work credibly and collaboratively with multiple distinct product engineering teams.
• Familiarity with AI/agent integration patterns and MCP is a strong plus.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to align senior stakeholders and engineers across organizational boundaries.

What We Offer:

A great team and culture – please see our colleague video. An exciting career as an integral part of a world-leading software company providing solutions for architecture, engineering, and construction - watch this short documentary about how we got our start. An attractive salary and benefits package. A commitment to inclusion, belonging and colleague wellbeing through global initiatives and resource groups. A company committed to making a real difference by advancing the world's infrastructure for better quality of life, where your contributions help build a more sustainable, connected, and resilient world. Discover our latest user success stories for an insight into our global impact.