Head of Platform Infrastructure, Pliant
Digital corporate credit card solutions
Open for applications
Digital corporate credit card solutions
201-500 employees
Open for applications
201-500 employees
Company mission
To empower businesses to grow by providing a smart payment option that grows with their business.
Role
Who you are
- 10+ years of experience in software engineering and/or infrastructure engineering, including significant leadership experience (building and scaling teams, leading managers, and driving cross-org initiatives)
- Strong technical background in cloud infrastructure and modern platform engineering (Kubernetes, IaC, CI/CD, observability, incident response, reliability engineering)
- Demonstrated ability to scale an organization: hiring, org design, team charters, career ladders, and operating cadence
- Proven ability to run infrastructure as an internal product: stakeholder alignment, adoption focus, prioritization, and measurable outcomes
- Experience implementing security and compliance controls in a pragmatic, developer-friendly way (shift-left guardrails, automation, secure defaults)
- Strong understanding of cloud cost drivers and experience building cost visibility and optimization practices (FinOps mindset)
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to align stakeholders across engineering and the business
- Experience in a regulated environment (fintech, payments, or similar) is a plus
What the job involves
- We're seeking an experienced Head of Platform Infrastructure (m/f/d) to take ownership of today's Platform Infrastructure team and evolve it into a department that provides cloud infrastructure, reliability engineering, developer productivity, security engineering, and cost management capabilities for all of Pliant Engineering
- You will lead the existing team and scale it into a multi-team department with focused ownership areas
- The goal is to make infrastructure a competitive advantage: enabling product teams to ship safely and quickly, operate reliably, and meet security and compliance requirements with minimal friction
- This is a unique opportunity arising from our growth
- You will partner closely with engineering leadership and stakeholders across the company to set priorities, define operating mechanisms, and deliver measurable outcomes
- Platform Infrastructure exists to provide a reliable, secure, and scalable infrastructure platform so that Pliant can innovate rapidly and scale seamlessly, with infrastructure becoming a competitive advantage
- Today, Platform Infrastructure is operated as a single team (with broad ownership)
- The department structure is intended to be built incrementally into multiple teams, such as:
- Cloud Infrastructure & Kubernetes (including cell-based architecture and “Cell Factory” automation)
- Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
- Developer Productivity & Experience
- Security Engineering
- FinOps & Cost Management
- Data Platform Engineering
- A core focus for the Head of Platform Infrastructure will be to design and drive this evolution, ensuring no gaps in ownership while responsibilities transition from “one broad team” to “multiple specialized teams with clear charters.”
- Our Tech Stack: Java, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, Kafka, AWS, Docker, Terraform
- Lead and Develop the Existing Platform Infrastructure Team: Take ownership of the current team’s delivery, reliability posture, and roadmap, while providing clear direction, coaching, and a psychologically safe environment
- Scale the Team into a Department: Define the target department structure, establish team charters, and hire and develop engineering managers and senior ICs to form multiple focused teams over time (e.g., Cloud Infra, SRE, Dev Productivity, Security, FinOps, Data Platform)
- Drive Platform Strategy and Roadmap: Set and communicate a multi-quarter roadmap that balances developer velocity, reliability, security/compliance, and cost efficiency
- Own Reliability and Operational Excellence: Strengthen incident management, on-call health, observability, and SLO/SLI practices across platform and critical services
- Enable Developer Velocity: Build and evolve self-service “Golden Path” workflows (tooling, CI/CD, templates, automation) so product teams can ship frequently and safely
- Embed Security and Compliance by Default: Ensure security and compliance are automated into platform workflows (guardrails, secrets, scanning, policy enforcement, audit readiness) without slowing teams down
- Make Cost a First-Class Engineering Input: Increase cost transparency and accountability with dashboards, allocation approaches, optimization programs, and cost-aware architecture standards
- Manage OKRs and Continuous Improvement: Set and track quarterly OKRs and continuously improve platform outcomes through metrics, feedback loops, and iterative delivery
- Champion Pliant Values: Embrace and live Pliant’s core values - Push It, Own It, Open Up, Be Kind, Have Fun, Be Pliant - while fostering a strong department culture
- The opportunity to work in a growing team with big responsibilities that thrives on a strong exchange of knowledge and excellence
Our take
The corporate credit card industry, historically dominated by giants like AmEx, has seen rapid disruption and growth over recent years. An influx of VC investment boosted smaller outfits like Divvy and Brex Inc. to multi-billion dollar operations, and this has cracked open the market to a host of smaller fintech startups.
Pliant is a German company entering the scene, but it’s a competitive one. It's hoping to stand out by prioritising seamless software integrations, competitive cashback, and a new optional feature offsetting travel-related CO2 emissions. The latter is incredibly novel and has undoubtedly won the company some press in an increasingly sustainability-oriented climate.
Pliant’s offering of both physical and digital cards, as well as its suite of advantages and services, has enabled the company to successfully adapt to the growing payments market. The company has, thus far, entered seven additional European markets and expanded its customer portfolio sixfold. Following successful funding rounds, Pliant is set to further expand operations and its business reach, with a focus on the US.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
233% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Apr 2025
$40.4m
SERIES B
Apr 2024
$20.7m
SERIES A
Total funding: $120.7m
Company benefits
- Home office and remote work
- Flexible working hours
- Mobility discount
- Budget for professional development and training
- Railcard
- Monthly food allowance
- Gympass
- Weekly mindfulness sessions
- Team events
Company HQ
Kollwitzkiez, Berlin, Germany
Leadership
Fabian Turner
(Co-Founder & CPO)Previously the Head of Operations at Lendico, and went on to serve as CPO at FinCompare.
Malte Rau
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously a Portfolio Manager and Head of Fintech Investments at Global Growth Cap, they then went on to found Geldspeicher GmbH.
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