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