Principal Platform Engineer, AI & Automation

JOB DESCRIPTION – PRINCIPAL PLATFORM ENGINEER, AI & AUTOMATION Location: Phoenix, Arizona (Hybrid) Division: Ticketmaster NA Line Manager: Director, Software Engineering Contract Terms: Permanent, full-time/40h per week THE TEAM The Global Host Platform group designs, builds, and runs the foundational systems powering Ticketmaster’s concert sales. Our Host Platform Engineering team is a lean, high-leverage group of experts who run our platform at global scale. We write, build, and maintain the internal tools that sustain the scale and resiliency we require to meet peak demand during high-demand onsales. THE JOB We’re looking for a Principal Platform Engineer, AI & Automation to join our Host Platform Engineering team within the Global Host Platform org. This is a role for a seasoned engineer who wants to reduce tech debt, enable teams with automation and AI, and raise the bar for operational excellence. You’ll work across systems that power some of the most business-critical parts of live entertainment. Working alongside AI agents and assistants, you’ll rapidly deliver hands-on code, build scalable automation, and lead the adoption of agentic, AI-driven SRE and DevOps tools to deliver resiliency and security in today’s constantly evolving platform engineering landscape. This is a chance to shape how a high-impact engineering team delivers measurable value with AI continually enhancing our capabilities in new ways.

Software Engineering & Automation Write high-quality, maintainable code that accelerates platform automation and reduces tech debt across Global Host Platform systems. Build the internal tools that keep our systems scalable and resilient at global scale — engineered to hold up under the peak load of high-demand onsales. Use scripting (Python, Bash) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible) to simplify and standardize operational workflows. Lead technical deep-dives to spot automation opportunities and tackle long-standing inefficiencies. AI-Driven Development Drive adoption of AI developer tools — e.g. Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Amazon Q, and local models via Ollama — across the team. Design and champion agentic AI workflows that plan, reason, and act — building frameworks for autonomous task execution and tool chaining, including via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Define and evolve our internal patterns for LLM-backed development, spec-driven workflows, and AI-augmented refactoring — with attention to code quality, security, and human review.

Enablement & Standards Define and evangelize internal standards for platform automation, SRE practice, and code quality. Mentor engineers and spread knowledge across the team, especially on getting real leverage from modern AI tooling. Partner with reliability and platform engineers to deliver automation that sticks — measurable impact over buzzwords. Lead in-person team trainings, gatherings, and hackathons on-site monthly, and travel quarterly. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (or TECHNICAL SKILLS) 8+ years of hands-on software engineering experience; systems or backend engineering preferred. Hands-on experience with AI developer tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, etc.), LLM-backed scripting, and agentic AI systems capable of planning, tool use, and autonomous task execution in engineering workflows. Agentic AI in both our developer processes and our production services is a must — you build with it day-to-day and you run it where reliability actually counts. Strong command of multiple scripting languages and infrastructure-as-code tooling. Experience with automated VM deployments (VMware) and automated configuration management (Ansible). Containerizing software and tools (Docker, Podman) and deploying them in orchestrated environments (Kubernetes). Experience in SRE, DevOps, or platform engineering — or the curiosity and track record to ramp up fast. A genuine drive to reduce tech