Lead Cloud Platform Engineer

Job Description

Hi! We're so happy that you're here.

Think-it is a software engineering collective on a mission to leverage technology to regenerate our planet and advance human potential. Our global team helps organisations around the world build digital solutions for a sustainable future.

We partner with brands like BMW, SoundCloud, and Hala Systems, and are core committers to the Eclipse Dataspace Connector (EDC) standard - building sovereign data infrastructure used by some of the largest enterprises in Europe.

Founded in 2017, Think-it is home to a diverse community of changemakers - we represent 10+ nationalities, and 40% of us are women. We're proud to be backed by mission-aligned partners, and our goals are people- and planet-centric.

The Challenge

Think-it is rebuilding its approach to cloud infrastructure and platform engineering. We're not just filling a position - we're defining what excellent looks like. This is your opportunity to shape both our technical infrastructure and our engineering culture from the ground up.

The domain: Much of our work sits at the intersection of sovereign data exchange and AI. We build infrastructure that enables enterprises to share data across organisational boundaries - with enforceable policies, decentralised trust, and full sovereignty. This means working with the Eclipse Dataspace Connector (EDC), federated architectures, and Kubernetes-native deployments that serve production dataspaces like Catena-X (automotive, 241+ participating companies including BMW, VW, and Mercedes-Benz).

If you're unfamiliar with dataspaces - that's fine. What matters is you're the kind of engineer who can pick up a complex domain, understand the architectural constraints, and build the platform that makes it work reliably.

The mandate: Establish Think-it as an organisation where every engineer has the knowledge, tools, and confidence to build, deploy, and operate production systems to high standards. You'll own our AWS infrastructure, Kubernetes deployments, and DevOps practices - and make this expertise accessible across the entire engineering team, not locked away in a single person.

You'll work directly with our CTO and Engineering Manager Lead to make architectural decisions that balance technical excellence with business pragmatism. You'll define the standards, establish the practices, and build the culture.

What You'll Do

Own and evolve Think-it's cloud and platform infrastructure. You'll be responsible for AWS infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters, CI/CD pipelines, observability, and security posture. You'll make architectural decisions and implement solutions that support both client engagements and internal operations.

Build organisational capability, not dependency. Create documentation that actually gets used. Run workshops. Mentor engineers. The goal: every engineer can confidently prepare production-ready deployments. Build leverage through teaching, not through being the only person who knows how things work.

Engage with stakeholders to translate needs into infrastructure solutions. Work directly with clients when needed. Present technical approaches to non-technical audiences. Bridge the gap between what stakeholders need and what's technically achievable.

Identify gaps and drive solutions. When you see something missing - a process, a tool, a skill - work with the CTO and Engineering Manager Lead to address it. Propose solutions and drive change. You'll have input on hiring, skill development, and organisational structure.

Keep the lights on whilst building forward. Debug production issues. Optimise costs. Improve security. Ensure reliability. Balance operational stability with moving the platform forward.

Invest in your own growth (20% time). We allocate dedicated time for learning and development. What that looks like is up to you: reading papers, experimenting with new tools, contributing to open source, writing about what you learn, speaking at conferences, or going deep on a technology that expands your capabilities. You own your growth trajectory. We create the space for it.

These responsibilities are a starting point. We're a small company without rigid role boundaries, and we'll help you grow wherever your interests and strengths take you.

Requirements

You'll Thrive Here If

You have deep expertise in cloud and platform engineering. You've built and operated production systems on AWS. You know Kubernetes beyond kubectl apply - you can deploy, debug, secure, and optimise clusters, and teach others to do the same. You're proficient with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi, or similar). You understand observability, security practices, cost optimisation, and the operational realities of keeping services running.

You care about developer experience. Whether it's a CLI tool, a deployment pipeline, an internal platform, or API design - you believe the tools engineers use daily should be well-crafted, intuitive, and reduce friction. You think about the person who comes after you.

You've driven change beyond your immediate team. You've introduced practices, improved processes, or influenced architectural decisions across multiple teams. You can point to specific examples where you made things better for an entire organisation, not just your own backlog.

You communicate clearly and teach effectively. You explain complex infrastructure concepts to non-technical stakeholders without dumbing things down. You write documentation people actually reference. You present with confidence. You get satisfaction from watching others become more capable.

You take initiative and own outcomes. You see problems and solve them without waiting for a ticket. You deliver quality work autonomously. When you hit blockers, you find ways around them or escalate with context.

You balance technical excellence with practical constraints. You pursue quality but know the difference between the right abstraction and over-engineering. You make pragmatic trade-offs and can articulate why.

You work well with distributed, international teams. You're comfortable with asynchronous communication, different working styles, and building trust across timezones.

You're genuinely aligned with Think-it's mission. You care about using technology for positive impact and embody our values of Integrity, Collectivism, Ownership, and Fairness in how you work.

You have professional fluency in English (written and verbal) for international collaboration.

If you don't meet 100% of these, you should still seriously consider applying - at least one of us was missing each of these at the outset!

Tech You'll Work With

This isn't a checklist - it's context on our stack. Depth in some of these matters more than breadth across all of them.

• Cloud: AWS (primary), with exposure to multi-cloud patterns
• Orchestration: Kubernetes (EKS), Helm, container runtimes
• IaC: Terraform (current), open to Pulumi/CDK
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, or similar GitOps tooling
• Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, structured logging
• Security: IAM, network policies, secrets management (Vault, KMS), mTLS
• Languages: Comfort with at least one of: Go, Python, TypeScript, or Java (for tooling and automation)
• Domain-specific: Eclipse Dataspace Connector (EDC) deployments, PostgreSQL, S3 (experience with EDC is a bonus, not a requirement)

Benefits

Life at Think-it

We are explicit about our values, and they shape daily life:

Our integrity means we treat trust as our most precious asset and speak truthfully and kindly. Our collectivism shows in how we invest in each other's success and approach work as learn-it-alls. Our ownership is reflected in how we value impact over effort and proactively create change. Our fairness manifests in transparent decisions and commitment to diversity.

What this means practically:

• Competitive salary commensurate with experience
• Autonomous, remote-friendly culture where you're trusted to do exceptional work
• Direct partnership with CTO and Engineering Manager Lead to shape the organisation
• 20% dedicated time for learning and development
• Personal L&D budget
• Free weekly team lunches when co-located
• Team activities, retreats, and reflections
• Globally conscious culture invested in ethical technology
• Peer-to-peer learning within a community that values knowledge sharing

We're a distributed team with flexible schedules that support our families and lives outside work. We’d love for you to have some overlap with CET working hours, ideally for at least 4 hours each day!

Think-it is committed to Equal Employment Opportunity regardless of race, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, veteran status, disability, history of disability, or perceived disability.