Director of Platform Engineering

About Actian

Actian is the company behind the Data Intelligence Platform — an enterprise solution that helps organisations discover, govern, and trust their data at scale.

Our platform connects metadata, data lineage, data quality, and business context into a single knowledge graph, enabling enterprises to turn raw data into reliable decisions and providing the trusted data foundation required for enterprise AI.

We operate globally, move fast, and build for the long term.

The Opportunity

We are looking for an experienced Director of Platform Engineering or Director of DevOps to establish and lead our newly formed Platform Engineering organisation.

This is a hands-on technical leadership position for an engineering leader who has successfully built and scaled platform or infrastructure teams within a technology product company.

You will not simply inherit and manage an existing organisation. You will build the team, define its technical direction, establish its operating model, and remain closely involved in architecture and implementation.

You should be someone who can move confidently between strategic decisions and hands-on engineering: designing infrastructure, reviewing code, implementing automation, solving complex production challenges, and setting engineering standards.

We are an AI-first engineering organisation. We expect you to actively use AI technologies to accelerate engineering, automate infrastructure operations, and fundamentally rethink how platform teams work.

This is a builder's role, not a traditional executive management position.

What You Will Own:

1. Platform Engineering & Architecture

Establish and lead the Platform Engineering organisation from the ground up.

Design and implement scalable, reliable platform services supporting our data catalog, knowledge graph, and integration APIs.

Define the architecture and engineering standards used across the organisation.

Establish clear ownership boundaries and effective collaboration with product engineering teams.

2. Cloud Infrastructure & Deployment

Design and deliver a cloud-agnostic deployment architecture across AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, and customer-managed on-premises and private-cloud environments.

Build and maintain Kubernetes-based infrastructure in production.

Own infrastructure as code using Terraform/Terragrunt and GitOps-based deployment using Argo CD or equivalent technologies.

Ensure reliable installation, upgrades, maintenance, and supportability across different customer environments.

Support restricted-network and air-gapped deployment scenarios where required.

3. AI-First Engineering & Infrastructure Operations

Integrate AI agents into infrastructure operations, including incident triage, remediation, change validation, and reporting.

Use AI coding assistants and development agents extensively in your own daily engineering work.

Establish practical standards for AI-assisted engineering across the platform team.

Identify opportunities to replace traditional tools and operational processes with AI-driven automation.

Build the infrastructure required to support AI and ML workloads, including model-serving environments and associated data services.

Ensure appropriate human oversight, security guardrails, and auditability for AI-driven operations.

4. Security, Compliance & Reliability

Establish security and compliance practices supporting SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and GDPR.

Ensure compliance with EU data residency and customer-specific security requirements.

Implement automated compliance evidence collection and audit readiness.

Establish observability, monitoring, incident management, and on-call practices.

5. Team Building & Leadership

Recruit, develop, and lead a high-performing Platform Engineering team.

Define the team's structure, responsibilities, processes, and engineering culture.

Remain technically involved while developing the team's capabilities and autonomy.

Work closely with the SVP of Engineering and other technical leaders to align platform strategy with business and product priorities.

What You Will Deliver in Your First 12 Months:

Build and establish a high-performing Platform Engineering team with clear ownership and responsibilities.
Deliver a portable deployment architecture supporting AWS, at least one additional public cloud, and customer-managed infrastructure.
Establish infrastructure as code and GitOps delivery as standard engineering practices.
Introduce AI agents into operational workflows, with measurable reductions in manual effort and operational overhead.
Deliver scalable infrastructure foundations for our data catalog, knowledge graph, and integration APIs.
Automate compliance evidence collection and improve audit readiness.
Establish a reliable operating model covering observability, incident response, security, and cloud cost management.

What You Bring:

Leadership & Experience

10+ years of professional experience in Platform Engineering, DevOps, Infrastructure Engineering, or SRE.

At least 3 years of direct engineering management experience.

Currently operating at Director of Platform Engineering, Director of DevOps, or an equivalent hands-on Director-level position.

Demonstrated experience building and scaling engineering teams, rather than exclusively managing established organisations.

A strong track record of delivering and operating production platforms within a technology product company.

The ability to combine technical leadership with hands-on engineering execution.

Technical Expertise

Deep, hands-on production experience with Kubernetes.

Strong infrastructure-as-code experience, particularly Terraform or Terragrunt.

Proven experience implementing GitOps and CI/CD pipelines using Argo CD or comparable technologies.

Strong AWS expertise and practical experience designing cloud-portable architectures.

Experience with Azure or Google Cloud is highly desirable.

Demonstrated experience with self-hosted or on-premises enterprise software deployments.

Practical experience with SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and data residency requirements.

Experience with cloud cost optimisation, FinOps, and infrastructure efficiency.

AI-First Mindset

Extensive practical use of AI coding assistants, development agents, and AI-driven automation.

Experience applying AI to engineering productivity and infrastructure operations.

Ability to identify, implement, and govern AI-driven operational workflows.

A forward-looking mindset about how AI will change platform engineering and infrastructure management.

Leadership Approach

Strong ownership and execution skills.

Comfortable making technical decisions and taking responsibility for their outcomes.

Able to build teams and systems from scratch.

Clear communication and the ability to work across distributed international engineering teams.

Comfortable working across US Eastern and Central European time zones.

Nice to Have:

Experience with enterprise data platforms, data catalogues, metadata management, or graph databases.
Production experience across multiple cloud providers.
Experience with air-gapped and restricted-network deployments.
Infrastructure for AI/ML workloads, model serving, vector databases, or graph data stores.
OpenTelemetry or comparable observability technologies.
Privileged access management solutions such as StrongDM.

How You Will Work:

You will report directly to the SVP of Engineering and work closely with Product Engineering, Security, Customer Success, and Support.

This is a fully remote position based in the US East Coast, UK, Germany, France, or Spain, subject to local employment eligibility.

You should be able to maintain at least four hours of daily overlap with both US Eastern Time and Central European Time.

Occasional travel for team offsites and company-wide meetings may be required.

We value builders over theorists, ownership over hierarchy, and measurable outcomes over activity.

If you have built and scaled a platform engineering organisation, remain technically hands-on, and believe AI should fundamentally change how infrastructure teams operate, we would like to hear from you.

What We Offer:

The chance to be part of an innovative, fast-growing company making a significant impact in the data management space.
Collaboration with a passionate and diverse team.
Competitive salary and benefits package.
Flexible work arrangements (remote or hybrid).
Opportunities for professional growth and development.