Tech Lead Platform Engineering

Do you lead from inside the code, or from a slide deck? At Budget Thuis, one of the largest energy, internet and mobile providers in the Netherlands, we're looking for a Tech Lead Platform Engineering to own the internal developer platform our product teams build on. Curious? Keep reading.

What you'll do

As Tech Lead Platform Engineering, you own the technical direction of the platform team at one of the biggest players in the Dutch energy sector.

• Own the technical direction of the platform within its architecture, make the design calls, and stay accountable for technical quality;
• Keep building and reviewing code, so you keep real depth in the hybrid Kubernetes platform the team runs;
• Set the bar on code review, testing and operational readiness, and hold the team to it;
• Own operational excellence: SLOs, observability, reliability and incident learning;
• Design golden paths and self-service so app teams ship without filing tickets, with a clear escape hatch for cases that don't fit;
• Plan and sequence the migration of workloads from VMs to Kubernetes, with coexistence and rollback, respecting data gravity;
• Work with the infrastructure team as partners across different timelines, and earn adoption from app teams through real value;
• Coach and unblock engineers and share knowledge, so no single person becomes a point of failure.

About the team

Platform Engineering is a small team building the internal developer platform that the rest of engineering runs on. Today most services live on static VMs that need downtime to patch, so app teams file tickets to get changes onto them. We're moving them to a self-service platform on Kubernetes, across cloud and on-prem. You'll work closely with Engineering Managers, Architects and the infrastructure team, and report to the Head of Engineering while the management lines settle. We make pragmatic calls under real constraints and measure success by whether teams actually adopt what we build.

What you bring

Must-haves:

• A senior, hands-on background as a platform engineer, infrastructure engineer or DevOps lead; you still write and review code;
• Deep Kubernetes experience and a platform-as-product mindset: golden paths, self-service and real adoption;
• Hybrid, multi-cluster experience across cloud and on-prem, with honest respect for on-prem constraints like finite capacity and storage;
• GitOps and infrastructure as code: Git as source of truth, reconciliation, promotion models and safe secrets handling;
• Platform security fundamentals: multi-tenancy isolation, policy-as-code, RBAC and secure-by-default paved roads;
• Observability as first-class: logs, metrics, traces, SLOs and error budgets out of the box;
• Technical leadership without formal management: you set direction, multiply others and don't become the bottleneck;
• Clear communication that engineers want to follow and that adapts to non-technical audiences.

Nice to have:

• Azure or multi-cloud experience.
• Experience running technical hiring and growing engineers over time.
• Platform product metrics and adoption measurement.
• Domain knowledge in energy, utilities or telco.

At Budget Thuis we think it's important that you can be 100% yourself. We're open to different perspectives and personalities. For this role we're ideally looking for someone who enriches our team in every way: someone who, from their own background, is a valuable addition.

Why the grass is greener here

• A salary that matches your knowledge and experience;
• 13th month salary;
• Budget Summer Holiday: every Friday off in July and August (9 extra days);
• 1 paid volunteering day per year;
• 25 holiday days, with the option to buy 1.5 extra weeks;
• Pension: 16% of gross salary incl. holiday allowance (11% Budget Thuis, 5% own contribution);
• Monthly ClassPass credits;
• Travel: Swapfiets or NS Business Card, your choice;
• Free mobile and internet subscription from Budget Thuis;
• Hybrid working (50/50);
• 1 month per year fully remote;
• Free access to OpenUp for mental health and courses.

Ready to lead our platform as the next Tech Lead Platform Engineering? Apply or reach out to Liesbeth van Brakel, liesbeth.vanbrakel@budgetthuis.nl with any questions. Relocation is not possible.