The Platform Engineering Lead / Head is a senior technical leadership role responsible for building and leading the Platform Engineering function within ITSC. This role manages a multidisciplinary team of Software Engineers, Cloud Engineers, DevOps Engineers, Security Engineers, and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) - establishing the engineering foundations, DevSecOps ways of working, and platform capabilities that enable all delivery squads to build and operate applications at scale. The Platform Engineering Head works in close partnership with InfoSec, Infrastructure, and PMO teams to deliver a secure, reliable, and developer-friendly platform ecosystem
Responsibilities
Team Leadership & Engineering Culture
- Lead and grow a high-performing Platform Engineering team comprising Software Engineers, Cloud Engineers, DevOps Engineers, Security Engineers, and SREs.
- Define team structure, engineering roles, career development pathways, and performance standards.
- Foster an engineering culture of craftsmanship, automation-first thinking, reliability, and continuous improvement.
- Mentor senior engineers and serve as a technical authority across platform, cloud, and DevSecOps domains.
DevSecOps Ways of Working
- Establish and lead DevSecOps practices across all delivery squads — embedding security, quality, and operational excellence into every stage of the software delivery lifecycle.
- Design and operate CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or equivalent) that automate build, test, security scanning, and deployment.
- Integrate SAST, DAST, dependency scanning, and container security tools into delivery pipelines in partnership with InfoSec.
- Define and enforce branching strategies, code review practices, release gates, and deployment standards across all squads.
- Champion DevSecOps adoption through enablement sessions, runbooks, tooling standards, and embedded squad support.
Cloud & Infrastructure Engineering
- Architect, provision, and manage cloud infrastructure on AWS (and/or Azure) supporting all ITSC application environments — development, staging, and production.
- Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform, CloudFormation, or equivalent to ensure consistent, auditable, and scalable environment provisioning.
- Design and manage container platforms (Docker, ECS/EKS or equivalent Kubernetes) supporting microservices and cloud-native applications.
- Oversee network architecture, VPC design, IAM policies, and cloud security controls in alignment with enterprise InfoSec standards.
Site Reliability & Observability
- Define and enforce Service Level Objectives (SLOs), SLAs, and error budget policies for all platform-managed services.
- Establish a full-stack observability capability using tools such as Datadog, Grafana, AWS CloudWatch, or equivalent — covering metrics, logs, traces, and alerting.
- Lead incident response and post-mortem processes, driving blameless culture and systemic improvements.
- Manage on-call rotations and runbook development to ensure 24/7 platform reliability.
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Governance
- Work closely with InfoSec to implement security controls, vulnerability management programs, and compliance requirements across the platform.
- Partner with the Infrastructure team on hybrid cloud-on-premise connectivity, server lifecycle management, and network standards.
- Collaborate with PMO and squad Tech Leads to ensure platform services meet delivery squad requirements and release cadences.
- Define and govern platform tooling standards (e.g., Atlassian, GitLab, Terraform, SonarQube, Datadog) and technology roadmaps.
- Provide technical input into tooling investment proposals, budget planning, and vendor evaluations.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
- 7–10 years of experience in software engineering, cloud, or DevOps roles, with at least 3 years leading platform or infrastructure engineering teams.
- Deep technical expertise across two or more of: cloud platforms (AWS/Azure), CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, IaC, security engineering, or SRE.
- Hands-on experience with tools such as GitLab, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes/ECS, SonarQube, Datadog, and AWS services.
- Strong understanding of DevSecOps practices — including SAST/DAST, secure SDLC, and compliance frameworks (ISO 27001, SOC2, or equivalent).
- Proven ability to influence and collaborate across engineering, security, infrastructure, and business teams.
Good to Have
- AWS Solutions Architect, AWS DevOps Engineer Professional, or equivalent cloud certification.
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or equivalent container orchestration certification.
- Experience implementing platform engineering or Internal Developer Platform (IDP) concepts.
- Exposure to FinOps practices and cloud cost optimization.
- Experience in regulated industries (pharma, financial services, or FMCG) with compliance and audit requirements.
