Head of Platform Engineering

OnHires

Head of Platform Engineering managing infrastructure and platform functions for a remote-first digital product company. Guide architecture and lead a team to scale modern SaaS solutions across Europe.

Posted 7/24/2026full-timeRemote • 🇪🇺 Anywhere in EuropeLeadWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates extensive expertise in Platform Engineering, focusing on AWS infrastructure, CI/CD practices, and team leadership. Capable of defining technical strategies, improving operational efficiency, and ensuring security and reliability across cloud environments.

Highest-signal resume keywords

AWS Infrastructure ManagementCI/CD Pipeline DesignKubernetes and Docker ProficiencyInfrastructure as Code with TerraformTeam Leadership and Development

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Platform EngineeringDevOps PracticesSite Reliability EngineeringCloud ArchitectureNetworkingScalabilityReliabilitySecurityInfrastructure Security PracticesTechnical Standards Development

Soft Skills

Documentation SkillsAsynchronous CommunicationTeam CollaborationMentoringStrategic Thinking

Tools & Technologies

GitHub ActionsGitLab CIArgoCDTerraformPulumiPrometheusGrafanaDatadogIAMRBAC

Industry Keywords

SaaSDigital Product OrganizationCloud EfficiencyIncident ResponseDisaster Recovery

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudDockerGrafanaKubernetesPrometheusTerraform

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Take full ownership of the company’s platform and infrastructure function.
Define and execute the platform engineering strategy in partnership with the CTO.
Assess the current infrastructure landscape and develop a prioritized roadmap for reliability, scalability, security, automation, developer experience, and cloud efficiency.
Present and align the platform roadmap with the CTO and Engineering Leads within the first 90 days.
Translate business and product priorities into clear platform investments and technical decisions.
Define long-term standards for cloud infrastructure, deployment, observability, security, and environment management.
Establish clear ownership boundaries, service expectations, and operating principles for the Platform function.
Define and track platform KPIs, including uptime, MTTR, deployment frequency, delivery reliability, and cloud cost efficiency.
Own the evolution of the company’s AWS infrastructure, CI/CD ecosystem, observability, security, and deployment practices.
Standardize CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code, deployment workflows, and environment management across engineering teams.
Develop reusable platform components and self-service capabilities that reduce manual work and improve developer productivity.
Improve the reliability, scalability, and maintainability of production environments.
Establish and evolve infrastructure security practices, including least-privilege access, IAM/RBAC, secrets management, vulnerability management, and secure deployment standards.
Strengthen monitoring, logging, alerting, and tracing across the platform.
Improve incident response, on-call, postmortem, backup, and disaster recovery practices.
Partner with product engineering teams to remove platform bottlenecks and improve the speed and safety of software delivery.
Lead, mentor, and develop the existing team of three DevOps Engineers and one SRE.
Set clear responsibilities, expectations, and development plans for team members.
Build a strong technical culture based on ownership, documentation, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement.
Hire additional platform engineers as the function grows.
Balance strategic platform initiatives with operational priorities.
Ensure the team is focused on the highest-impact infrastructure and platform improvements.
Create effective collaboration between Platform, Product Engineering, Security, and Engineering Leadership.
Own performance management and support the professional development of the team.
own platform-related budgeting, including cloud spend, infrastructure tooling, and vendor relationships.
Improve visibility into cloud usage and infrastructure costs across products and teams.
Identify and execute cost optimization opportunities without compromising reliability, security, or developer productivity.
Evaluate new platform technologies based on measurable engineering and business value.
Introduce practical automation and AI-assisted workflows where they can improve platform operations, documentation, incident response, or engineering productivity.

Requirements

What you’ll need

7+ years of experience in Platform Engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, or a related field.
2+ years leading a Platform, Infrastructure, DevOps, or SRE function.
Proven experience managing and developing a team of platform, infrastructure, DevOps, or SRE engineers.
Strong production experience with AWS and a deep understanding of cloud architecture, networking, scalability, reliability, and security.
Hands-on production experience with Kubernetes and Docker.
Strong experience designing, building, and improving CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, ArgoCD, or similar tools.
Production-scale Infrastructure as Code experience with Terraform or Pulumi.
Experience with IAM, RBAC, secrets management, vulnerability management, and infrastructure security practices.
Experience with observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or equivalent tools.
Experience supporting multiple engineering teams, products, or production environments within a SaaS or digital product organization.
Proven ability to introduce technical standards, improve engineering efficiency, and influence infrastructure decisions across teams.
Experience owning or contributing to platform roadmaps, technical strategy, and infrastructure budgets.
Experience working in a remote-first or distributed engineering organization.
Strong documentation and asynchronous communication skills.
English at B2 level or above.
Based in Europe and able to collaborate effectively across European time zones.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive compensation aligned with the seniority and scope of the role.
Fully remote work from anywhere in Europe.
Flexible working hours within a distributed, remote-first environment.
22 paid vacation days plus local public holidays.
Direct collaboration with the CTO and senior engineering leadership.
An established Platform/DevOps team of four engineers.
The opportunity to take full ownership of an existing infrastructure function and define its next stage of development.
A meaningful technical scope supporting approximately 15 products and 40–50 engineers.
A modern cloud and platform engineering environment using contemporary technologies and practices.
A high level of autonomy in defining platform priorities, standards, and ways of working.
The opportunity to influence infrastructure architecture, developer experience, reliability, security, automation, and cloud efficiency across the organization.
A collaborative, product-focused culture with an emphasis on ownership, documentation, and practical decision-making.