LEAD Platform Engineering

Location:Johannesburg
Remote work:Only remote work
Type:Contract
Reference:#GZ61236
Company:E-Merge IT Recruitment

We’re hiring a Head of Platform Engineering to take full ownership of our infrastructure and scale it for the next phase of growth.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who thrives in building, not inheriting — you’ll define the architecture, set the standards, and lead a high-performing team from the ground up. You’ll work closely with the CTO to shape both the platform and the team, with AI-assisted engineering at the core of how we operate.

What you’ll own
  • End-to-end platform infrastructure - architecture, build, and operational maturity
  • Production AWS environments (EKS, RDS/Aurora, VPC, ALB/NLB, IAM, ElastiCache, CloudFront)
  • Kubernetes at scale - cluster management, autoscaling, and networking policies
  • Microservices architecture - service discovery, resilience, and load balancing
  • Database performance and scalability — replication, sharding, caching
  • Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or similar)
  • CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, or similar)
  • Observability — logging, tracing, alerting, SLOs
  • Security — IAM, network segmentation, and secrets management
What we’re looking for
  • 4 to 6 years in platform, DevOps, or infrastructure engineering
  • At least 2 years in a leadership or lead role
  • Strong AWS and Kubernetes experience in production environments
  • Deep understanding of distributed systems and scalable architecture
  • Comfortable working with AI-assisted tooling and automation
  • Excellent written communication skills (async-first environment)
Nice to have
  • Experience in regulated environments (PCI DSS, SOC 2)
  • Exposure to Azure
  • FinOps and cost optimisation experience
Reference number for this position is GZ61236 which is a contract remote long term contract position offering a rate of R900 per hour negotiable on experience and ability. Contact Garth on az.oc.egrem-e@zhtrag or call him on 011 463 3633 to discuss this and other opportunities.

Are you ready for a change of scenery? The E-Merge IT recruitment is a specialist niche recruitment agency. We offer our candidates options so that we can successfully place the right developers with the right companies in the right roles. Check out the e-Merge website www.e-merge.co.za for more great positions.

Do you have a friend who is a developer or technology specialist? We pay cash for successful referrals!

Posted on 09 Apr 09:36, Closing date 8 Jun

Apply

Garth Zoutendyk
garthz@e-merge.co.za
0114633633

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