Director of Platform Engineering [gn] Data Intelligence Platform

Actian Corporation

1d • Remote

About The Position

Actian is hiring a hands-on Director of Platform Engineering to stand up and lead a newly formed platform team supporting its Data Intelligence Platform. The platform connects metadata, data lineage, data quality, and business context in a knowledge graph, helping enterprises discover, govern, and use trusted, AI-ready data. The Director will build the team and its operating model while contributing directly to platform design, infrastructure code, and engineering standards.

The role owns platform services and infrastructure for the data catalog, knowledge graph, and integration APIs; cloud-agnostic deployment across AWS, another public cloud, and customer on-premises and private-cloud environments; the internal developer platform and GitOps-based CI/CD; security operations and compliance readiness; FinOps; AI/ML workload infrastructure; and observability, reliability, and incident response. The leader will build AI agents to support guarded infrastructure operations, use AI engineering tools, and evaluate retiring tools that AI or simpler automation can replace.

Within the first 12 months, the Director is expected to establish a high-functioning team, deliver portable deployments across cloud and customer infrastructure, put AI agents to work on routine operations, provide scalable infrastructure for key platform services, and automate evidence collection for SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and GDPR audits.

The position reports to the SVP of Engineering and works with product engineering, security, customer success, and support. It is fully remote from the US, UK, Spain, France, or Germany, with at least four hours of daily overlap with both US Eastern Time and Central European Time. Occasional travel for team offsites and company-wide meetings is expected.

Requirements

• At least 10 years of experience in platform engineering, infrastructure, DevOps, or SRE.
• At least 3 years managing engineers.
• Experience building or scaling a team, rather than only operating an established team.
• An AI-first mindset and extensive use of AI to accelerate development.
• A track record of shipping on-premises or self-hosted software that customers install and operate in their own environments.
• Deep, hands-on production experience with Kubernetes.
• Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code, such as Terraform or Terragrunt.
• Experience with GitOps delivery using Argo CD or similar tooling.
• Strong AWS experience and the judgment to design for portability rather than single-cloud lock-in.
• Hands-on experience operating systems under SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR controls, including data-residency requirements.
• Experience managing cloud costs and making cost trade-offs explicit to engineering and business leaders.
• Clear written communication suited to a fully remote team across US and EU time zones.
• Ability to work remotely from the US, UK, Spain, France, or Germany and maintain at least four hours of daily overlap with both US Eastern Time and Central European Time.
• Willingness to travel occasionally for team offsites and company-wide meetings.

Nice To Haves

• Experience running infrastructure for data platforms, data catalogs, or graph databases.
• Production experience with Azure or Google Cloud in addition to AWS.
• Experience with air-gapped or restricted-network customer deployments.
• Experience building infrastructure for AI and ML workloads, including model serving and vector or graph data stores.
• Experience with OpenTelemetry or comparable observability tooling, from instrumentation through alerting.
• Experience with StrongDM or a comparable privileged access management tool.

Responsibilities

• Build, lead, hire, and grow the platform engineering team; establish its operating model, ownership boundaries, standards, and rituals.
• Design and build platform services and infrastructure for the data catalog, knowledge graph, and customer integration APIs.
• Deliver cloud-agnostic deployment across AWS, a second public cloud, and customer on-premises and private-cloud environments, including packaging, installation, upgrades, and supportability.
• Own the internal developer platform and CI/CD, including GitOps delivery.
• Partner with the security team on security operations, compliance evidence, and EU data residency for SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and GDPR.
• Manage cloud costs and FinOps, providing clear cost visibility and accountability across environments.
• Build infrastructure for AI and ML workloads used by the platform.
• Own observability, reliability, incident response, and the team's on-call rotation.
• Design and operate infrastructure AI agents with clear guardrails, human approval for high-risk changes, and audit trails.
• Review tooling and retire tools that AI agents or simpler automation can replace, documenting cost and risk considerations.
• Use AI coding and operations assistants in daily work and establish standards for the team's use of them.
• Work with product engineering, security, customer success, and support; maintain required US and Central European time-zone overlap.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and benefits package.
• Flexible work arrangements, including remote or hybrid options.
• Opportunities for professional growth and development.
• Opportunity to work with a passionate and diverse team at an innovative, fast-growing company.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed