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Your Mission

As Lead Platform Engineer at Theo, you build and maintain the core infrastructure and platform services that enable scalable, reliable deployment and operation of our products. You own cloud infrastructure, system design and development enablement so that product and data teams can ship quickly, safely and in a compliant way. In this senior role, you act as the technical backbone of the product organisation: you make key architecture and technology decisions, introduce standards and guardrails, and ensure our platform keeps pace with the growth of our business. Working closely with Product Engineers, Forward Deployed Engineers, Data, IT Ops and DevSecOps, you turn requirements from across the company into a robust, future-proof foundation for our platform.

Your Responsibilities

  • Design, build and operate our cloud platform (infrastructure, runtime, networking, observability, security) to ensure high availability, performance and cost efficiency.
  • Own development enablement: CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, tooling and documentation that allow teams to build, test and deploy autonomously while staying on the happy path.
  • Lead platform architecture and governance, including vendor selection, platform technology choices and technical quality and security standards for the platform area.
  • Act as technical leader for platform topics: drive cross-team initiatives, review designs and code, and mentor engineers working with the platform.
  • Collaborate closely with Product, Data, IT Ops and Operations to translate business and regulatory needs into pragmatic, iterative platform roadmaps and solutions.

Preferred Background

  • 7–10 years of experience as a Platform / Infrastructure / Backend Engineer working on distributed systems in a modern cloud environment, including several years in a senior or lead capacity.
  • Strong hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure (e.g. networking, containers and orchestration, databases, monitoring/logging) and infrastructure-as-code plus CI/CD tooling.
  • Solid software engineering background in at least one modern backend language and ecosystem (e.g. Java/Kotlin, Go, Node.js, Python), including testing and observability.
  • Proven track record in technical leadership: driving architecture decisions, leading cross-team initiatives, mentoring engineers and improving engineering practices.
  • Comfortable taking ownership of vendor and technology choices, including security, reliability and compliance implications.
  • Excellent communication skills; able to explain complex technical topics clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Working proficiency in English and German at C1 level or above.

Nice to have

  • Experience in B2B SaaS, platform or operations-heavy businesses.
  • Exposure to data platforms and event-driven architectures.
  • Experience working with DevSecOps, compliance and data-protection topics.
  • Prior involvement in building or leading an engineering practice (e.g. defining standards, running guilds/chapters, supporting hiring and onboarding).

Why Join Us

At Theo, Platform Engineering is a core lever for transforming a traditional, offline industry into a modern, digital service. As Lead Platform Engineer, you join early enough to shape our architecture, standards and ways of working, while already having real customers, scale and funding behind you. You will work in a small, senior, cross-functional environment with direct access to Product and Data & Tech leadership, short decision paths and plenty of autonomy. Your work will make life easier for every engineer at Theo and directly impact how reliably and efficiently we can serve owners and tenants across Germany.