— About the role

The shape of the work

About the Role

We’re seeking a Director of Platform Engineering to lead our infrastructure, reliability, developer experience, and core backend platform efforts. This is a strategic, high-ownership leadership role responsible for building and guiding the teams that ensure the platform is secure, scalable, observable, and engineered for velocity.

In this role, you will set technical direction, drive architectural strategy, empower engineering teams with world-class tooling, and lead initiatives that enable the entire organization to move faster with confidence. You’ll work closely with product, engineering leadership, and cross-functional stakeholders to shape the platform that will support the company’s next phase of growth.

What You’ll Do

Lead and scale the Platform Engineering organization, including infrastructure, DevOps/SRE, and core backend platform teams.
Define the long-term platform vision, architecture, and technical roadmap.
Ensure the reliability, scalability, and security of our systems as usage grows.
Invest in developer experience through improved tooling, CI/CD pipelines, and streamlined workflows.
Drive standards and best practices for observability, incident response, and operational excellence.
Partner with engineering leaders to align platform capabilities with product and business goals.
Guide major architectural decisions and modernization initiatives.
Mentor, coach, and develop engineering managers and senior ICs.
Collaborate closely with security, product, and data teams on cross-functional initiatives.
Build a healthy, collaborative engineering culture grounded in ownership, trust, and technical rigor.

What We’re Looking For

8–12+ years of engineering experience, with 4+ years leading platform, infrastructure, or SRE teams.
Deep expertise in cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure), distributed systems, and high-scale architectures.
Proven experience driving platform strategy and building systems that support rapid product growth.
Strong understanding of developer tooling, CI/CD, observability, and modern DevOps practices.
Experience hiring, scaling, and developing high-performing engineering teams.
Excellent communication skills — able to influence executives, partner across teams, and break down complex concepts.
Comfort operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous startup environment.
A leadership approach that blends empathy, high standards, and strong technical judgment.

Nice-to-Haves

Experience scaling SaaS products or mission-critical systems.
Background in platform orgs at high-growth startups or mid-stage tech companies.
Familiarity with service mesh, multi-region architectures, event-driven systems, or zero-downtime migrations.
Experience managing budgets, vendor relationships, and long-horizon technical investments.
A track record of building internal platforms that significantly improve engineering productivity.

Why You’ll Love Working Here

Massive ownership and influence — you’ll shape the foundation of the company's technology for years to come.
Opportunity to build and scale a platform organization from an early inflection point.
A thoughtful, collaborative culture that values technical excellence and sustainable velocity.
Competitive compensation, equity, and benefits.

Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity Statement

We are committed to equal employment opportunity in both principle and as a matter of policy. We will recruit, hire, train, promote, compensate and provide benefits to all applicants and employees without regard to ancestry, sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, gender, age, religion, religious creed, mental and/or physical disability, medical condition, military and/or veteran’s status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state and local laws. This policy applies to all recruiting, hiring, promotions, upgrades, layoffs, compensation, benefits, terminations and all other privileges, terms and conditions of employment. The firm complies fully with all federal, state and local equal employment opportunity laws.

— Package

What we offer

Salary band

Competitive

Public band. Same rate for the same role.

Equity

Meaningful

10-year exercise window from leaving date.

Plus 36 days off, six months fully paid parental leave, £2,000 learning budget, climate sabbatical every five years, private health, pension matched 8%, and a rail-first travel policy across our European studios. Read the full package →

— Process

How hiring works

i

Intro call · 30 min

With our Head of People. Mutual scoping — your story, the role, package, anything you need to know up front.
ii

Deep-dive conversation · 60 min

With the hiring manager. Real work in your domain, no trick puzzles. We share material 24 hours ahead so you can come prepared.
iii

Take-home · ~3 hours, paid

A real task from our backlog. We pay £250 for your time, regardless of outcome.
iv

Onsite · half day

London studio (or video). Walk through your take-home with the team, meet engineering and product, finish with a no-pressure lunch.

A bit about the team

You'll join a group spread across our European studios — academic backgrounds mixed with industry, peer-reviewed and opinionated. Quarterly we close ranks for a "field week"; recent ones included a co-op cocoa supplier in Ghana and a vertical farm in Lyon.

Mossroot is committed to building a team as diverse as the supply chains we work on. We particularly welcome applications from groups under-represented in climate science.