Director of Platform Engineering

Itrs Insights; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Pension

Flexible Hybrid Working

Travel Insurance

Life Assurance

Income Protection

Training Reimbursement

Referral Bonus

Buy and Sell Holiday

Enhanced Parental Leave

Job summary

ITRS is seeking an experienced Director of Platform Engineering to lead our Analytics SaaS platform, focusing on Kubernetes-based services, cloud-native operations, and reliable service outcomes. You will guide hands-on SaaS engineering, set standards, coach engineers, and drive automation and observability.

In this role you will own SaaS operational standards, collaborate with Engineering, Product, Security and Customer-facing teams, and manage Forward Deployed Engineers to ensure scalable,

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading SaaS hosting teams in a hands-on tech leadership role.
• Track record building and improving operational teams with accountability for reliability.
• Deep knowledge of Kubernetes operations, deployments, upgrades and troubleshooting.
• Strong cloud operations across AWS, Azure or GCP with secure, resilient infra.
• Hands-on experience with IaC, CI/CD & GitOps for controlled production changes.
• Experience reducing operational toil via automation and self-service.
• Understanding of Agentic AI safely applied to operations with human oversight.
• Technical depth to challenge designs and contribute hands-on when needed.

Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day management, reliability and continuous improvement of the Analytics SaaS platform.
• Provide technical leadership to a hands-on SaaS engineering team with clear standards.
• Remain hands-on with production issues, Kubernetes troubleshooting, incident response and deployment automation.
• Drive automation and self-healing to reduce manual intervention and toil.
• Explore Agentic AI and intelligent automation to improve operational workflows.
• Own SaaS operational standards including runbooks, monitoring, change control and post-incident reviews.
• Collaborate with Engineering, Product, Security and Customer-facing teams to ensure operability, security and supportability.

Skills

Kubernetes operations

Cloud platforms

Automation tooling

SaaS leadership

GitOps

AI / Agentic AI

Incident management

Communication

Stakeholder alignment

Tools

Kubernetes (EKS/AKS/GKE)

GitOps tools (Argo CD, Flux)

Cloud providers (AWS/Azure/GCP)

Job description

At ITRS, we make society’s critical technology work. Our mission is to deliver automated and holistic IT observability solutions that safeguard critical applications and enable innovation. We are the only monitoring and observability platform designed for the most demanding and regulated industries — trusted by 90% of Tier 1 capital markets firms.

We believe when our team thrives, so do our customers. With us, you’ll find:

• A culture that backs you – We’re proud to be a Great Place to Work for multiple years in a row due to our inclusive, supportive environment.
• Work that matters – Make a real difference with 1,000s of global customers in industries that keep the world running, including 9 out of 10 top investment banks.
• Room to grow – Whether you're starting your career or bringing years of experience, we’re committed to your development. Just ask our team members who’ve been excelling here for 10+ years.

With headquarters in London and teams across the US, Europe, and Asia, ITRS combines the agility of a high-impact tech business with the stability of a private equity–backed global partner

Scope

ITRS is looking for an experienced and accomplished, or aspiring, Director of Platform Engineering to join our collaborative and inclusive team. Reporting to our Global Head of Platform Engineering, this is a hybrid-working role, typically requiring 2 days per week in the office. The role will also include leadership of our Forward Deployed Engineers, ensuring this team is closely aligned with platform engineering practices, customer delivery priorities and operational standards.

The ITRS engineering teams are building a next-generation observability platform with the capability to collect, store and analyse the vast amount of data generated by banks and financial institutions.

Requirements

As Director of Platform Engineering, you will:

• Lead the day‑to‑day management, reliability and continuous improvement of ITRS’ Analytics SaaS platform, with a strong focus on Kubernetes‑based services, cloud‑native operational excellence and measurable service outcomes.
• Provide proven technical leadership for a hands‑on SaaS engineering team, setting clear standards, coaching engineers and creating an operating culture focused on ownership, automation, reliability and continuous improvement.
• Remain highly hands‑on, working directly with engineers on production issues, Kubernetes troubleshooting, incident response, deployment automation, observability, capacity management and service resilience.
• Drive the evolution of SaaS engineering towards a more automated model, reducing manual intervention, operational toil and human hand‑offs through better tooling, workflow automation and self‑healing capabilities.
• Explore and adopt appropriate Agentic AI and intelligent automation capabilities to improve operational decision support, incident triage, runbook execution, knowledge retrieval, change preparation and service management workflows.
• Own SaaS operational standards, including runbooks, monitoring, alerting, incident management, post‑incident reviews, backup and recovery practices, change control and customer‑impact communications.
• Work closely with Engineering, Product, Security and Customer‑facing teams to ensure SaaS capabilities are designed for operability, scalability, security and supportability from the outset.
• Manage and develop the Forward Deployed Engineering function, ensuring engineers embedded with customers or customer‑facing initiatives are supported, technically aligned and operating to consistent engineering, delivery and support standards.
• Ensure operational practices support regulated‑industry expectations, including evidence of access control, change management, incident response, vulnerability management and service continuity.

You will have:

• Proven experience leading SaaS Hosting teams in a hands‑on technical leadership role, ideally within a high‑availability, enterprise or regulated environment.
• A track record of building, leading and improving operational teams, including setting direction, developing engineers, raising standards and creating accountability for service reliability and operational outcomes.
• Deep practical knowledge of Kubernetes operations, including deployments, upgrades, networking, storage, ingress, secrets, autoscaling, workload troubleshooting and cluster reliability.
• Strong cloud operations experience across AWS, Azure or GCP, with the ability to design and operate secure, resilient and cost‑aware infrastructure.
• Hands‑on experience with Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, GitOps or similar automation approaches, with a clear understanding of how to make production changes controlled, repeatable and auditable.
• Experience reducing operational toil through automation, workflow redesign, self‑service capabilities, standardised runbooks and improved observability.
• A strong understanding of how Agentic AI or intelligent automation can be applied safely and pragmatically to operational workflows, while maintaining appropriate human oversight, control and auditability.
• The technical depth to challenge designs, troubleshoot complex production issues and contribute directly where needed, rather than operating only as a people or process manager.
• Good understanding of security and compliance expectations for SaaS operations, including access control, change management, vulnerability management, logging, audit evidence and operational resilience.
• Experience leading or working closely with Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Customer Engineering or similar customer‑embedded technical teams.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical risk, operational trade‑offs and delivery priorities clearly to engineering, product and senior stakeholders.

You will benefit from having the following experience:

• Previous hands‑on experience in a Forward Deployed Engineer role, with an understanding of the balance between customer delivery, product feedback, production support and engineering quality.
• Experience operating SaaS platforms built on managed Kubernetes services such as Amazon EKS, Azure AKS or Google GKE.
• Strong understanding of GitOps tooling such as Argo CD, Flux or equivalent deployment automation approaches.
• Experience with ISO 27001, SOC 2 or similar assurance frameworks, particularly where operational teams are required to provide evidence for access, change, incident, backup, resilience and monitoring controls.
• Practical experience applying AI, Agentic AI, AIOps or intelligent automation to operational use cases such as incident triage, anomaly detection, runbook automation, knowledge search, root cause support or service desk workflows.
• Knowledge of observability and reliability practices, including SRE principles, service‑level objectives, alert tuning, capacity planning and production readiness reviews.
• Experience operating SaaS products for financial services, enterprise technology or other regulated customers with demanding availability, security and audit requirements.
• Experience with container security, policy‑as‑code, image scanning, secrets management, role‑based access control and Kubernetes security hardening.
• A background in DevOps, SRE, Cloud Operations or Platform Engineering, with a track record of improving automation, reliability and operational maturity.
• Health Insurance and Dental Health Cover for you and your dependants
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Pension
• Flexible Hybrid Working
• Enhanced Parental Leave
• Travel Insurance
• Life Assurance
• Income Protection
• Referral Bonus
• Buy and Sell Holiday
• Training Reimbursement

ITRSis an Equal Opportunity employer and Inclusion is part of our everyday life. We celebrate diversity and pride ourselves on providing an environment where all employees can be their authentic selves and have a voice, allowing everyone to contribute equally. We remain committed to advocating inclusion, diversity, and equality into our ITRS family as we grow and enrich our business.

We welcome applications from everyone in the community as we recognise that a diverse workforce is a stronger workforce.