Head of Platform Engineering

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Head of Platform Engineering based in Switzerland.

This role offers the opportunity to lead the evolution of a modern platform engineering function within a fast-growing digital product environment. You will take ownership of cloud infrastructure, developer experience, reliability, security, and automation strategies supporting a diverse portfolio of SaaS products and engineering teams. Working closely with senior engineering leadership, you will define the long-term platform vision, improve operational maturity, and enable teams to build and deliver software more efficiently. This position is ideal for an experienced engineering leader who combines strategic thinking with strong technical expertise and enjoys building scalable, reliable systems. You will have the autonomy to shape platform standards, mentor talented engineers, and make a significant impact on technology operations across a global organization.

Accountabilities: Take full ownership of the platform engineering and infrastructure function, defining its strategy, priorities, and long-term direction.

Partner with senior engineering leadership to establish a clear platform roadmap focused on reliability, scalability, security, automation, developer experience, and cloud efficiency.

Assess the existing infrastructure landscape and identify opportunities to improve consistency, visibility, operational maturity, and engineering effectiveness.

Define platform standards for cloud infrastructure, deployment processes, observability, security practices, and environment management.

Own the evolution of cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code practices, deployment workflows, and production environments.

Develop reusable platform capabilities and self-service solutions that improve developer productivity and reduce operational overhead.

Strengthen infrastructure security through improved access controls, IAM/RBAC practices, secrets management, vulnerability management, and secure deployment processes.

Improve monitoring, logging, alerting, tracing, incident response, disaster recovery, and operational resilience.

Lead and mentor a team of platform engineers, establishing clear responsibilities, growth plans, technical standards, and a culture of ownership.

Support hiring and scaling of the platform function as business needs evolve.

Collaborate with product engineering teams to remove technical bottlenecks and improve software delivery speed and reliability.

Own platform-related budgeting, vendor relationships, cloud cost visibility, and optimization initiatives.

Evaluate emerging technologies and introduce automation or AI-assisted workflows where they can improve engineering productivity and operational efficiency.

Define and track platform KPIs, including uptime, deployment reliability, recovery times, delivery performance, and infrastructure cost efficiency.

Requirements

7+ years of experience in Platform Engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, or a related technical discipline.

2+ years of experience leading a Platform, Infrastructure, DevOps, or SRE function with responsibility for technical direction and team development.

Proven experience managing and mentoring platform, infrastructure, DevOps, or reliability engineering teams.

Strong production experience with AWS, including cloud architecture, networking, scalability, reliability, and security principles.

Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and Docker in production environments.

Strong background designing and improving CI/CD pipelines using tools such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, ArgoCD, or similar technologies.

Experience implementing Infrastructure as Code solutions using Terraform, Pulumi, or equivalent tools.

Solid understanding of infrastructure security practices, including IAM, RBAC, secrets management, vulnerability management, and secure deployment approaches.

Experience with observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or comparable monitoring solutions.

Experience supporting multiple engineering teams, products, and production environments within SaaS or digital product organizations.

Proven ability to define technical standards, influence engineering decisions, and improve operational efficiency across teams.

Experience owning platform roadmaps, technical strategies, and infrastructure budgets.

Strong documentation skills and ability to communicate effectively in remote and asynchronous environments.

Experience working in distributed, remote-first engineering organizations.

English proficiency at B2 level or above.

Based in Europe with the ability to collaborate effectively across European time zones.

Experience with multi-product technology organizations, internal developer platforms, FinOps practices, GCP/Azure environments, AI-assisted engineering tools, Python/Go/Bash scripting, DORA metrics, or relevant cloud certifications is considered an advantage.

Benefits

Competitive compensation package aligned with the seniority and scope of the role.

Fully remote working opportunity from anywhere in Europe.

Flexible working hours within a distributed remote-first environment.

22 paid vacation days plus local public holidays.

Direct collaboration with CTO and senior engineering leadership.

Opportunity to lead an established platform team and shape its future direction.

High level of autonomy in defining platform priorities, architecture standards, and engineering practices.

Opportunity to influence infrastructure supporting approximately 15 digital products and dozens of engineers.

Modern cloud and platform engineering environment using contemporary technologies and best practices.

Collaborative product-focused culture centered on ownership, documentation, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Opportunity to make a strategic impact across reliability, security, automation, developer experience, and cloud efficiency.

How Jobgether works: We use an AI-powered matching process to ensure your application is reviewed quickly, objectively, and fairly against the role's core requirements. Our system identifies the top-fitting candidates, and this shortlist is then shared directly with the hiring company. The final decision and next steps (interviews, assessments) are managed by their internal team. We appreciate your interest and wish you the best!  Why Apply Through Jobgether?    Data Privacy Notice: By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Jobgether will process your personal data to evaluate your candidacy and share relevant information with the hiring employer. This processing is based on legitimate interest and pre-contractual measures under applicable data protection laws (including GDPR). You may exercise your rights (access, rectification, erasure, objection) at any time.     #LI-CL1