Head of Platform Engineering

We’re hiring a Head of Platform Engineering to take full ownership of our infrastructure and scale it for the next phase of growth.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who thrives in building, not inheriting — you’ll define the architecture, set the standards, and lead a high-performing team from the ground up. You’ll work closely with the CTO to shape both the platform and the team, with AI-assisted engineering at the core of how we operate.

What you’ll own

• End-to-end platform infrastructure - architecture, build, and operational maturity
• Production AWS environments (EKS, RDS/Aurora, VPC, ALB/NLB, IAM, ElastiCache, CloudFront)
• Kubernetes at scale - cluster management, autoscaling, and networking policies
• Microservices architecture - service discovery, resilience, and load balancing
• Database performance and scalability - replication, sharding, caching
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or similar)
• CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, or similar)
• Observability - logging, tracing, alerting, SLOs
• Security - IAM, network segmentation, and secrets management

What we’re looking for

• 4 to 7 years in platform, DevOps, or infrastructure engineering
• At least 2 years in a leadership or lead role
• Strong AWS and Kubernetes experience in production environments
• Deep understanding of distributed systems and scalable architecture
• Comfortable working with AI-assisted tooling and automation
• Excellent written communication skills (async-first environment)

Nice to have

• Experience in regulated environments (PCI DSS, SOC 2)
• Exposure to Azure
• FinOps and cost optimisation experience

Reference number for this position is GZ61236 which is a contract remote position offering a cost to company salary of R1400k per annum negotiable on experience and ability. Contact Garth on az.oc.egrem-e@zhtrag or call him on 011 463 3633 to discuss this and other opportunities.

Are you ready for a change of scenery? The E-Merge IT recruitment is a specialist niche recruitment agency. We offer our candidates options so that we can successfully place the right developers with the right companies in the right roles. Check out the E-Merge website www.e-merge.co.za for more great positions.
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Posted on 13 Apr 14:08, Closing date 12 Jun