Head of IT Platform & Infrastructure

Stack

Responsibilities

• ▹Lead, coach and grow a distributed team of platform engineers; hire, develop careers and build an ownership culture with clear responsibilities per platform and no single points of knowledge
• ▹Define and own the roadmap for the SaaS platforms, AI enablement and supporting infrastructure; align it with the IT strategy and business priorities and communicate trade-offs clearly to leadership
• ▹Act as the accountable service owner for core SaaS platforms (Google Workspace, Slack and further business-critical applications), covering availability, change and release management, admin standards and documentation
• ▹Take full ownership of the Atlassian Cloud platform (Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence): administration, governance, performance and configuration standards that scale
• ▹Use AI actively to change how the team works, automating operational routine, ticket and incident triage, provisioning, reporting and documentation instead of scaling headcount
• ▹Drive platform governance: tenant configuration, admin roles, data retention, external sharing and approval of third-party apps and integrations
• ▹Simplify and right-size the application landscape; consolidate overlapping tooling and retire what is no longer needed
• ▹Own data protection for the SaaS platforms, including rollout and operation of enterprise backup and recovery
• ▹Keep the lean cloud infrastructure and core services such as DNS and certificates reliable and secure
• ▹Own the integration layer between platforms (APIs, event-driven workflows, automated provisioning) together with the IT Identity & Endpoint team
• ▹Work in close alignment with InfoSec: embed least privilege, hardened baselines and useful logging into platform design, own remediation of findings and provide reliable audit evidence
• ▹Own the budget and the vendor and partner relationships for the platforms in scope
• ▹Act as an internal advocate for responsible, secure AI adoption, enabling teams rather than gatekeeping them

Requirements

• ▹10+ years of experience in IT platform operations, SaaS administration, platform engineering or IT infrastructure, including at least 4 years of people leadership
• ▹Proven track record of leading distributed teams across locations and time zones, ideally in a fast-growing SaaS or technology company
• ▹Deep hands-on experience administering and governing enterprise SaaS platforms at scale, ideally Google Workspace and Slack
• ▹Strong Atlassian Cloud expertise: administration, governance and configuration of Jira, Jira Service Management and Confluence at enterprise scale
• ▹Demonstrated AI fluency: hands-on experience applying LLMs and AI tooling to real operational problems, and a solid understanding of how AI gateways and model access are deployed, secured and governed
• ▹Hands-on know-how in hosting and operating MCP servers and in providing virtualized infrastructure for custom builds, with a focus on standardized, repeatable deployments
• ▹Practical experience automating platform work through APIs, integrations, workflow automation and scripting
• ▹Good understanding of identity and access management concepts such as SSO, SAML/OIDC, SCIM provisioning and privileged access
• ▹Solid working knowledge of public cloud services and of SaaS data protection and backup concepts
• ▹Strong IT security fundamentals and a track record of working effectively with security and audit teams, for example in ISO 27001 environments
• ▹Experience with ITSM practices, service ownership, budget responsibility and vendor management
• ▹Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills; able to explain technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders and senior leadership
• ▹A builder's mindset, comfort with ambiguity and change, and the pragmatism to deliver in small, low-risk steps
• ▹Fluent English

Nice to have

• ▹German (a plus, not a requirement)

Soft skills

What we offer

• ▹Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) and merit-based refresh grants for every full-time employee
• ▹Parental leave: 24 weeks fully paid for primary carers and 12 weeks for supporting carers, from the first day
• ▹Unlimited PTO (in applicable regions) and generous PTO globally, flexible hybrid work model
• ▹70-20-10 learning framework, mentorship programs and a dedicated learning platform
• ▹Subsidized Wellhub memberships, mental health counseling and Wellness Weeks
• ▹Annual Impact Days: paid time off to volunteer for community and environmental causes

About the company

Celonis is the platform to industrialize Enterprise AI, built around the Celonis Context Model. The company is headquartered in Munich and New York City, with more than 20 offices worldwide. The IT platform team runs a lean, fully cloud-based infrastructure with no legacy data center.