Head of Platform

Head of Platform Type: Permanent Salary: £100,000-£110,000 + share options Location: Deansgate, Manchester (hybrid, 1 day a week in the office) We’ve partnered with an established, fast-growing data and SaaS business that is seeking a Head of Platform to lead its software engineering function through a period of significant growth. As demand for its connected technology accelerates, so do its data volumes and platform needs. Reporting to the CTO, you’ll own everything software related: infrastructure, DevOps, backend services and APIs, the web platform and the mobile apps. It’s a friendly, fast-moving business where decisions are made quickly, and the platform you lead sits at the heart of what customers buy. Responsibilities - Lead the platform engineering function, managing the front-end, back-end and mobile leads, plus a wider team of 6-7 engineers across the UK and US - Shape and own the platform roadmap with the CTO and business unit owners, balancing day-to-day delivery against strategic priorities - Lead the platform through rapid growth, making sure infrastructure, data handling and services stay resilient, performant and ready to scale - Own the security of the platform environment, including pen-testing partners, and support upcoming ISO and SOC 2 certification - Define how the team adopts AI tooling to improve productivity while protecting quality and uptime - Drive engineering standards, documentation and operational best practice across the teams - Coach and develop engineers, building a culture of ownership and accountability - Help build out a dedicated DevOps function from next year - Represent the platform across the business, working with founders, sales, innovation and department heads - Manage key technology vendor relationships and contracts Skills & Experience - Proven experience leading multiple engineering teams that deliver an interrelated digital product and roadmap - Experience managing a cloud platform, with AWS strongly preferred (Azure or GCP considered) - Broad understanding of how modern platforms fit together: containers, serverless, APIs, CI/CD and observability - Exposure to AWS, MongoDB, React/TypeScript, Terraform, GitHub Actions and Grafana - Strong stakeholder management skills, and the ability to turn business needs into engineering priorities - A pragmatic, commercial mindset that values shipping and iterating over chasing perfection - A considered, informed view on AI and its role in engineering teams - Startup or scale-up experience, or a genuine appetite for ownership and wearing many hats