Director of Platform Engineering Location : Barcelona, Spain

Preply Inc.; Barcelona; Presencial; EUR 80.000 - 130.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

An established industry player is seeking a Director of Platform Engineering to lead and innovate across key teams. This role offers the chance to shape the future of platform architecture, optimize cloud costs, and build a high-performing culture focused on technical excellence. You will collaborate with various teams to implement ML Ops capabilities and enhance developer experience, ensuring that the technology stack evolves with business goals. Join a dynamic and diverse environment where your contributions will make a significant impact on learners and tutors worldwide.

Servicios

Generous monthly allowance for lessons

Learning & Development budget

Health insurance

Relocation package

Access to mental health support

Gympass-partnered wellness access

Formación

• Proven experience in Platform Engineering or as CTO/VP Engineering.
• Deep understanding of AWS, CI/CD, and microservices.

Responsabilidades

• Lead and grow a high-performing engineering organization.
• Define and drive the evolution of infrastructure and architecture.
• Collaborate with leadership to improve engineering velocity.

Conocimientos

Platform Engineering

AWS

CI / CD

Observability

Microservices

Cost Optimization

Leadership

Business Acumen

Educación

Experience at Director level

Experience in high-growth tech environments

Herramientas

ML Ops

Cloud-native systems

Descripción del empleo

We’re looking for a Director of Platform Engineering to lead our Platform teams across SRE, Experimentation, Developer Experience and Design System - all key to powering our business. Reporting directly to the CTO and co-founder, this role will play a key part in scaling Preply’s platform for the next stage of growth, ensuring our technology stack evolves in lockstep with product innovation and ambitious business goals.

As a Director of Platform Engineering, you’ll be responsible for:

• Platform teams around clear goals, ownership boundaries, and cross-functional collaboration with engineering, data, and product.
• Architectural decisions, including the strategic decomposition of our monolith into modular, maintainable systems.
• Designing and delivering ML Ops capabilities from the ground up in collaboration with data science and infrastructure teams.
• Significantly optimizing Preply’s cloud costs, while improving observability, tooling, and developer experience across the organization.
• Building a high-trust, high-performance team culture rooted in technical excellence, customer centricity, and continuous improvement.

What you'll be doing:

• Leading and growing a high-performing organization (initially 3–4 direct reports, 6–7 teams), with room to expand.
• Defining and driving the evolution of our infrastructure, architecture, cloud setup, and developer tooling.
• Leveling up key capabilities including ML Ops, database optimization, CI / CD practices, and AWS cost efficiency.
• Bringing deep technical insight to strategic architectural decisions, including our move to more modular systems.
• Contributing to our AI strategy by enabling teams to train, deploy, and scale models effectively.
• Collaborating closely with leadership to drive cross-functional initiatives and improving engineering velocity.
• Acting as a culture carrier and people leader: hiring exceptional talent, developing managers, and ensuring teams are engaged and aligned.
• Balancing technical vision, business impact, and organizational leadership to deliver results that matter.

What you need to succeed:

• Proven experience at Director level in Platform Engineering, or as CTO / VP Engineering in high-growth tech environments.
• Experience managing 30–50+ engineers across multiple platform-focused teams (SRE, Infra, DevOps, ML Ops).
• Deep understanding of modern infrastructure: AWS / cloud-native systems, CI / CD, observability, microservices, security, and cost optimization.
• Strong business acumen and a product mindset — you think in terms of value delivered, not just systems built.
• Exceptional people leadership skills — you know how to stabilize, align, and grow diverse, high-performing teams.
• Hands-on leadership experience in companies of high scale (ideally cloud, SaaS, edtech, or AI-driven).

Why you’ll love it at Preply:

• An open, collaborative, dynamic and diverse culture.
• A generous monthly allowance for lessons on Preply.com, Learning & Development budget and time off for your self-development.
• A competitive financial package with equity, leave allowance and health insurance.
• Not in Barcelona? We offer an attractive relocation package to join us in our Preply Barcelona Hub.
• Access to free mental health support platforms.
• Access to Gympass-partnered wellness and gym centers throughout Spain to promote and support well-being and physical health.
• The opportunity to shape the lives of learners and tutors through language learning and teaching in 175 countries (and counting!).

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Preply is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment where people from all backgrounds can thrive. Different opinions and viewpoints are key ingredients in our success as a multicultural Ed-Tech company.

Preply will consider all applications for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or veteran status. Together, we are The World Class.