Lead Platform Engineer

About the role

We’re looking for an exceptional Lead Platform Engineer (LPE) to join Definely during a pivotal stage of growth. This is a player-coach role that combines hands-on engineering with technical leadership, where you’ll shape the infrastructure, APIs, and developer experience that enable product teams to ship quickly, securely, and reliably at scale.

You’ll guide the evolution of our document processing pipelines, data stores, and AI integrations, while championing DevOps/SRE practices, observability, security, and cost efficiency. You’ll influence engineering culture, mentor engineers, and help define architectural direction across the company.

This is an opportunity to build the foundations of a global SaaS platform, making technical and strategic decisions that will define the next phase of Definely’s growth.

What you'll do:

Platform Architecture & Strategy

• Own and evolve the technical roadmap for Definely’s platform services.
• Design scalable, resilient, and cost-efficient cloud-native systems for document and AI workloads.
• Define and uphold engineering principles and standards across teams.
• Partner with Product, Security, and Finance to align platform priorities with business goals.

Infrastructure & Operations

• Lead adoption of containers, Kubernetes, and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/CDK).
• Build and enforce best practices in observability, monitoring, and incident response.
• Set and maintain SLOs/SLAs for platform reliability and performance.
• Drive FinOps practices: forecasting, monitoring, and optimizing infrastructure spend.

Developer Experience

• Build internal tooling, templates, and pipelines to accelerate product delivery.
• Champion CI/CD adoption and empower engineers with self-service deployment capabilities.
• Improve developer productivity by standardizing environments and streamlining workflows.

Security & Compliance

• Partner closely with the ISO and Security teams to maintain compliance with ISO 27001, SOC 2, and GDPR.
• Implement identity and access management, secrets management, and network security best practices.
• Drive a security-first culture across platform and product teams.

Mentorship & Leadership

• Act as a technical mentor and coach, fostering growth and ownership within the team.
• Guide architectural decisions across product areas, balancing speed and long-term scalability.
• Influence engineering culture, encouraging adoption of DevOps and SRE principles.
• Collaborate with leadership on vendor evaluation, partner selection, and build-vs-buy decisions.

What you'll bring:

• Proven experience leading or building platform teams in a high-growth SaaS environment.
• Expertise with AWS (preferred) / Azure / GCP, Kubernetes, IaC, CI/CD, and observability.
• Strong API and event-driven architecture skills; familiarity with asynchronous pipelines.
• Track record of designing secure, multi-tenant architectures.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
• A Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science (or equivalent experience).

Nice-to-Have

• Production experience integrating Microsoft Word (Office.js) add-ins with backend services; knowledge of M365 auth patterns.
• Hands-on experience with LLM/AI platformization (RAG, vector search, evals, safety/guardrails).
• Experience with FinOps practices and infrastructure cost management.
• Prior exposure to global scaling challenges (latency, data residency, multi-region deployments).

What We Offer:

• Competitive Compensation: A salary package aligned with your experience and impact.
• Meaningful Stock Options: Be rewarded for growing with the company
• Annual Bonus scheme: Eligible for the company bonus scheme.
• Real Impact & Growth: Be part of a scaling company where your work truly moves the needle.
• High-Performance Culture: Collaborate with ambitious, high-calibre teammates who raise the bar.
• Private Healthcare: Vitality healthcare, including Dental and Optical.
• Generous Time Off: 25 days of annual leave plus UK public holidays.
• Pension Plan: Competitive scheme to help plan for your future.
• Work From Anywhere Policy: Spend up to a month a year working abroad
• Enhanced Parental Leave: Inclusive policies that support working families.
• Top-Quality Equipment: Modern tech and ergonomic setups to help you do your best work.

About Definely

Definely is revolutionising how legal professionals access and understand information in complex documents. Our LegalTech solutions integrate directly into legal workflows, enabling teams to draft, review, and interpret contracts more efficiently, without breaking focus.

We’re proud to be recognised among the Top 25 in Deloitte’s UK Technology Fast 50 and backed by Revaia, Microsoft, Google, and Octopus Ventures. Trusted by top firms like A&O Shearman, Dentons, Deloitte, and Barclays, we’re building tools that empower legal teams to work smarter and reduce risk.

At Definely, you’ll be part of a mission-driven, collaborative, and ambitious team committed to innovation and growth.

Data Privacy Notice

By submitting your application, you agree that DEFEYENE LEGAL SOLUTIONS LIMITED ('Definely') may collect, process, and store your personal data as part of our recruitment process. We will use the information you provide to assess your qualifications for the role you are applying for and to communicate with you regarding your application.Your personal data will be stored for up to 12 months, after which it will be securely deleted unless we have another lawful basis to retain it. You have the right to access, correct, or request the deletion of your data at any time.For more details on how we handle your personal data and your rights, please send us an email to [email protected] and we will send your our privacy policy.

If you have any concerns about how your data is being processed, please do not hesitate to contact us.