Kraken

Head of Platform Engineering - Infrastructure - (f/m/d)

Kraken • GB
Hybrid

Help us use technology to make a big green dent in the universe!

Kraken powers some of the most innovative global developments in energy.

We’re a technology company focused on creating a smart, sustainable energy system. From optimising renewable generation, creating a more intelligent grid and enabling utilities to provide excellent customer experiences, our operating system for energy is transforming the industry around the world in a way that benefits everyone.

It’s a really exciting time in energy. Help us make a real impact on shaping a better, more sustainable future.

Our Global Platform Engineering organisation is responsible for developing and maintaining the scalable infrastructure, tooling, and services that power Kraken’s Products and enable hundreds of engineers to deliver with speed, safety, and confidence.

As Head of Platform Engineering for Infrastructure, you'll lead the teams responsible for the cloud platforms, Kubernetes clusters, and network connectivity that underpin.

Working with Platform’s Product team, you’ll help define the strategic direction for Enablement, ensuring our engineering org has the right abstractions, automation, and anything else they need to focus on delivering customer value.

What you'll do

  • Have ownership of a functional group within Platform Engineering, working closely with the Engineering Director, Head of Product, and other Heads of Platform Engineering to define strategic objectives and team direction
  • Manage team priorities to ensure initiatives are completed within deadlines
  • Partner effectively in the wider Platform Engineering team to deliver outcomes
  • Ensure alignment between engineering, design, product, and wider org goals
  • Build a strong culture of open communication where teammates can ask questions without fear, promoting a positive and inclusive team environment.
  • Collaborate regularly and effectively with Staff Platform Engineers in your functional teams to deliver the technical implementation of the team’s strategic priorities
  • Lead the evolution of our cloud infrastructure, networking, and systems to support growth while maintaining reliability and controlling costs
  • Drive infrastructure automation, ensuring provisioning, scaling, and operations are efficient and repeatable
  • Lead delivery of major initiatives on clear timelines
  • What you'll have

  • Record of successfully and consistently delivering critical path projects, on time and at scale
  • Excellent communication, with a focus on doing this asynchronously across multiple timezones and countries
  • Meticulous organisation and planning skills
  • Experience of mentoring and coaching a team to perform at a high-level
  • Experience managing and supporting a large-scale internet-facing distributed systems, for millions of customers
  • Strong background in cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred), including compute, storage, and networking services- Deep understanding of infrastructure-as-code, configuration management, and automation at scale
  • What will help

  • Experience with cloud networking, including VPCs, transit gateways, direct connect, and hybrid connectivity patterns
  • Background in systems engineering, including Linux administration, performance tuning, and capacity planning
  • Previous experience in leading technical delivery for small, highly-autonomous teams
  • Track-record of effective collaboration with other teams and departments to drive holistic outcomes
  • A proactive, innovative mindset with the ability to drive continuous improvement
  • Previous experience working in a remote-first asynchronous global team providing follow the sun support
  • Experience with FinOps practices and driving cloud cost optimisation

  • Familiarity with some of our tech stack:
  • PostgreSQL, or a similar RDBMS, particularly in Amazon RDS at scale
  • Docker and Kubernetes, we use Amazon EKS in production
  • PythonDatadog, or a similar logging/monitoring tool
  • Messaging queues, event-driven async processing or similar technologies - we use RabbitMQ
  • Terraform, or a similar infrastructure-as-code tool