Platform Technical Lead (Cloud Infrastructure & AI Enablement)

At Vodafone, we’re working hard to build a better future. A more connected, inclusive and sustainable world. As a dynamic global community, it's our human spirit, together with technology, that empowers us to achieve this.

We challenge and innovate in order to connect people, businesses, and communities across the world. Delighting our customers and earning their loyalty drive us, and we experiment, learn fast and get it done, together.

With us, you can be truly be yourself and belong, share inspiration, embrace new opportunities, thrive, and make a real difference.

VOIS (Vodafone Intelligent Solutions) is a strategic arm of Vodafone Group Plc, creating value for customers by delivering intelligent solutions through Talent, Technology & Transformation. As the largest shared services organisation in the global telco industry with 30,000 FTE, our portfolio of next-generation solutions and services are designed in partnership with customers across Vodafone Group, local markets, and partner markets to simplify and drive growth. With our strategic partner Accenture, we work alongside our Vodafone customers, other Telco and tech companies to drive transformation, meet the challenges of our industry and ensure we stay relevant and resilient. This partnership is a unique, industry-first model which brings together the best of in-house and 3rd party capability. We work with customers across 28 countries from 10 VOIS locations: Albania, Egypt, Hungary, India, Romania, Spain, Turkey, UK, Germany, Ireland, and with a network of teams in Czech Republic, Italy, Greece, and Portugal. #VOIS #BeUnrivalled #CreateTheFuture

Location: Paddigton or Newbury (Hybrid)

We design, build and operate the digital and technology capabilities that power Vodafone's next-generation products and services. We provide the cloud-native engineering foundations, reusable platform capabilities, APIs, integrations and secure digital services that enable rapid, scalable delivery across multiple customer journeys, propositions and markets.Joining us means shaping the platforms, engineering practices and technology capabilities that underpin Vodafone's future growth. Our engineering teams leverage AI-native engineering practices to accelerate how software is analysed, designed, developed, tested and delivered, enabling faster delivery of high-quality solutions whilst maintaining strong governance, security and engineering discipline.

The Platform Technical Lead - Cloud Infrastructure & AI Enablement is a senior technical and people leader responsible for defining and evolving the cloud platforms, developer platforms, engineering automation capabilities and AI enablement services that underpin software delivery across the organisation.

The role leads the teams responsible for cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, developer experience, delivery automation and AI enablement capabilities, ensuring engineers can safely and efficiently deliver software using modern cloud-native and AI-native engineering practices. Operating across Engineering, Architecture, Security, Operations and Product teams, the Platform Technical Lead establishes the technical direction, governance, standards and operating model for platform engineering and AI enablement, enabling software delivery teams to scale securely, reliably and efficiently across multiple products, markets and customer journeys..

Given the responsibilities outlined above, the role includes:

Providing technical leadership and hands-on guidance across multiple engineering teams and delivery domains, ensuring consistent engineering standards, design patterns and implementation quality.

Leading and developing high-performing engineering teams, fostering a culture of technical excellence, accountability, continuous improvement and delivery ownership.

Driving the evolution and adoption of AI-native engineering practices, delivery frameworks, automation capabilities and engineering operating models across multiple teams.

Influencing major engineering, tooling and platform investment decisions, including automation, developer experience, cloud-native platforms and engineering capability uplift

Driving cross-functional technical forums, resolving major engineering risks and ensuring alignment with engineering standards, architectural principles and platform evolution roadmaps.

Define and evolve the cloud platform, developer platform and AI enablement strategy supporting engineering teams across the organisation.

Lead engineering teams responsible for cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, developer experience and AI enablement capabilities.

Establish cloud-native engineering standards, platform guardrails and reusable engineering capabilities.

Drive adoption of platform engineering practices, self-service developer platforms and infrastructure automation.

Define the strategy and governance model for AI engineering tooling, AI-native software delivery and responsible use of AI-generated artefacts.

Lead evaluation, adoption and operationalisation of AI engineering technologies including coding assistants, agent frameworks, evaluation platforms and engineering automation tooling.

Own engineering platform capabilities including CI/CD, deployment automation, observability, secrets management, platform security and self-service engineering tooling.

Drive improvements in developer productivity, engineering effectiveness and delivery throughput through platform automation and AI enablement capabilities.

Ensure platform services remain secure, scalable, resilient, cost-efficient and operationally robust.

Define platform reliability, availability, security and operational excellence objectives.

Lead cloud platform evolution including multi-tenancy, multi-region deployment, scalability, resilience and platform governance.

Influence platform, cloud and engineering technology investment decisions.

Build engineering capability through coaching, talent development and succession planning.

Cloud Platform Leadership - Deep understanding of cloud-native platforms, infrastructure strategy and large-scale platform operations.

Platform Engineering - Expertise in developer platforms, self-service engineering capabilities, automation and platform enablement.

AI Enablement - Strong understanding of AI-native software delivery, AI engineering tooling, agent frameworks and AI platform capabilities.

Engineering Automation - Experience building CI/CD platforms, deployment automation, testing platforms and developer productivity tooling.

Platform Security & Governance - Knowledge of secure platform design, governance controls, compliance and operational resilience.

Developer Experience - Proven ability to improve developer productivity and reduce friction throughout the software delivery lifecycle.

Systems Thinking - Ability to design reusable organisation-wide platform capabilities that solve recurring engineering challenges.

People Leadership - Proven experience leading platform engineering, cloud engineering and infrastructure teams