Vice President, Developer Platform

Job DescriptionWe are looking for a Vice President of Developer Platform to lead our Developer Platform tribe within the Tech Foundations vertical. The position will be based in Berlin. Your mission is to improve developer productivity and experience, and ensure reliable and cost-efficient operations of our services across the Delivery Hero group. You will be responsible for our developer infrastructure and tooling that enable teams to build, deploy, and operate software. Success in this role directly impacts Delivery Hero's business objectives by accelerating product delivery, enhancing platform stability and scalability, and improving overall engineering efficiency.This strategic position requires developing and communicating a compelling product vision for the developer platform, gaining buy-in from senior stakeholders, and driving implementation and adoption across diverse business units and subsidiaries.Reporting to the VP Tech Foundations, you will be responsible for leading and scaling the Developer Platform tribe. Your key responsibilities will include:Strategic LeadershipDefine and execute a comprehensive platform strategy that is tightly aligned with Delivery Hero's overarching business objectives and that resonates with senior stakeholders. This necessitates a deep understanding of the company's strategic direction and the ability to translate it into a detailed roadmap outlining the evolution of the platform's features and capabilities over time.Champion a "platform-as-a-product" mindset, recognizing internal developers as key customers and prioritizing their needs to ensure high adoption and satisfaction.Collaborate with C-level executives and business unit leaders to identify needs and opportunities and secure necessary resourcesDemonstrate the ROI of our investments within the developer platform to senior leadershipStay ahead of emerging trends and technologies within the cloud-native landscape to ensure you leverage the latest innovations to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.Team LeadershipLead and mentor a team of ~110 platform engineers, fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and collaboration.Provide guidance on technical challenges, offer performance management feedback, and create opportunities for professional development to ensure the team's continuous growth.Attract and retain top talent in a competitive market, building a high-performing team capable of delivering and maintaining world-class platform solutionsManage embedded teams within our subsidiaries and coordinate their efforts.Create a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learningManage resources effectively to deliver on strategic objectivesTechnical LeadershipOversee the design, architecture, and development of scalable, high-performance, and secure solutions, encompassing cloud infrastructure, continuous integration/continuous delivery, operational tooling and observability, microservices, and APIs.Focus on the automation of processes to avoid becoming a bottleneck.Harmonize tooling and infrastructure across the group.Lead the design, implementation, rollout, and evolution of a unified developer platform that serves the needs of all subsidiariesDeveloper ExperienceEnsuring an exceptional developer experience by making the developer platform intuitive, easy to navigate, and highly efficient is a paramount responsibility.Provide self-service capabilities to empower developers to manage their own environments and deployments, reducing dependencies and accelerating their workflows.Establish golden paths that align with the DH Tech Radar and standardized workflows to significantly reduce the cognitive load on developers, allowing them to focus on delivering business value.Measure developer experience through relevant metrics, such as DORA and SPACE, to quantify the impact of the developer platform on productivity and to identify areas for further enhancement.Operational ExcellenceMaintain the robustness, scalability, and security of Delivery Hero's infrastructure.Implement strategies to prevent downtime and effectively manage disaster recovery scenarios, and define best practices for telemetry, service level objectives, alerting, and incident responseManage cloud and infrastructure costs and optimize resource utilization.Cross-Functional CollaborationPartner closely with senior tech leaders (VPs, SVPs, CTOs) and development teams to understand their specific needs and usage patterns, ensuring the platform effectively addresses their requirements.Collaborate with the Global Tech Council (a group-wide CTO organization) to gather buy-in and align on adoption. Communicating the platform initiatives to executive leadership and other stakeholders is essential.Collaborate with Security to ensure that the platform adheres to all relevant requirements.Drive adoption of the developer platform across the group.QualificationsTechnical Experience10+ years of experience in software engineering, 5+ years in platform engineering.Proven track record of building and scaling a developer platform in complex organizations.Deep experience in application development and platform engineering in large-scale tech companies.Fluency in coding languages such as Go, as well as experience with infrastructure tooling, is expected.Thorough understanding of cloud-native microservice landscapes and event-driven architectures.Experience with DevOps and SRE is crucial.A strong grasp of concepts related to resiliency, containerization, security principles, and observability practices is necessary.Robust experience with AWS and GCP platformsLeadership Experience5+ years in senior leadership positions (Director level or above) with experience leading cross-functional teams and initiativesDemonstrable track record of successfully leading large-scale software development teams and complex software projects.Track record of successful stakeholder management at the executive levelStrong financial and business acumen will be beneficial in managing budgets and aligning platform initiatives with business goals. Proven experience in managing infrastructure costs and driving operational efficiencies is highly valued.History of driving organizational change and adoption of new technologiesExperience operating in a global environment with multiple subsidiaries.