Head of IT Platform & Infrastructure

Job description

Celonis is the trusted platform to industrialize Enterprise AI. At our core is the Celonis Context Model — which combines process data, business knowledge, and intelligence into a living digital twin of the enterprise that AI can actually understand, turning AI's operational blind spots into operational clarity. World's leading companies trust Celonis and its global ecosystem of partners to make their AI agents, people, systems, and processes work together, achieving transformational outcomes. We believe there's a massive opportunity to unlock global productivity and sustainability by giving AI the context to understand how every business process really works. Join our mission to make processes work for people, companies, and the planet. **The Team:** The Head of IT Platform & Infrastructure leads one of the core teams of our Global IT organization and reports to the Head of IT Infrastructure. The team owns the platforms almost every Celonaut works in every day — Google Workspace, Atlassian, Slack, and a long tail of business-critical SaaS applications — as well as a deliberately lean, fully cloud-based infrastructure with no legacy data center to maintain. You lead a distributed team of platform engineers across Europe and India and work side by side with our IT Identity & Endpoint and IT 1st Level Support teams and in very close alignment with InfoSec. Security and identity are shared design principles here, not downstream review steps. **The Role:** This role owns the strategy, operation, and evolution of Celonis' internal platform landscape. You set the direction for how our collaboration and productivity platforms are run, governed, and simplified, and you make sure they stay reliable, secure, and easy to use for a fast-moving global company. You take full ownership of our Atlassian Cloud estate and run it to the same standard as any other production platform. We are explicitly looking for a leader with a strong AI skillset and mindset: someone who treats AI as a core engineering capability, uses it to remove manual toil from platform operations, and can explain both its value and its risks credibly to leadership. This is a hands-on leadership role. You are close enough to the technology to earn your team's trust and senior enough to set direction, own the budget, and say no. **The work you’ll do:** - Lead, coach, and grow a distributed team of platform engineers; hire, develop careers, and build a genuine ownership culture with clear responsibilities per platform and no single points of knowledge - Define and own the roadmap for our SaaS platforms, AI enablement, and supporting infrastructure; align it with the IT strategy and business priorities and communicate trade-offs clearly to leadership - Act as the accountable service owner for our core SaaS platforms — Google Workspace, Slack, and further business-critical applications — covering availability, change and release management, admin standards, and documentation - Take full ownership of our Atlassian Cloud platform (Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence): administration, governance, performance, and configuration standards that scale as usage across the company grows - Use AI actively to change how the team works — automating operational routine, ticket and incident triage, provisioning, reporting, and documentation instead of scaling headcount - Drive platform governance: tenant configuration, admin roles, data retention, external sharing, and the approval of third-party apps and integrations - Simplify and right-size our application landscape; consolidate overlapping tooling and retire what is no longer needed - Own data protection for our SaaS platforms, including the rollout and operation of enterprise backup and recovery - Keep our lean cloud infrastructure and core services such as DNS and certificates reliable and secure - Own the integration layer between platforms: APIs, event-driven workflows, and automated provisioning, together with the IT Identity & Endpoint team - Work in close, continuous alignment with InfoSec; embed least privilege, hardened baselines, and useful logging into platform design, own remediation of findings, and provide reliable audit evidence - Own the budget and the vendor and partner relationships for the platforms in your scope - Act as a credible internal advocate for responsible, secure AI adoption — enabling teams rather than gatekeeping them **The qualifications you need:** - 10+ years of experience in IT platform operations, SaaS administration, platform engineering, or IT infrastructure, including at least 4 years of people leadership - Proven track record of leading distributed teams across locations and time zones, ideally in a fast-growing SaaS or technology company - Deep hands-on experience administering and governing enterprise SaaS platforms at scale, ideally Google Workspace and Slack - Strong Atlassian Cloud expertise: administration, governance, and configuration of Jira, Jira Service Management, and Confluence at enterprise scale - Demonstrated AI fluency: hands-on experience applying LLMs and AI tooling to real operational problems, and a solid understanding of how AI gateways and model access are deployed, secured, and governed - Hands-on know-how in hosting and operating MCP servers and in providing virtualized infrastructure for custom builds, with a focus on standardized, repeatable deployments - Practical experience automating platform work through APIs, integrations, workflow automation, and scripting; the specific languages and tools matter less than the instinct to automate - Good understanding of identity and access management concepts such as SSO, SAML/OIDC, SCIM provisioning, and privileged access - Solid working knowledge of public cloud services and of SaaS data protection and backup concepts - Strong IT security fundamentals and a track record of working effectively with security and audit teams, for example in ISO 27001 environments - Experience with ITSM practices, service ownership, budget responsibility, and vendor management - Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills; able to explain technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders and senior leadership - A builder's mindset, comfort with ambiguity and change, and the pragmatism to deliver in small, low-risk steps - Fluent English; German is a plus but not a requirement **What Celonis can offer you:** - Pioneer Innovation: Work with the global leader in Process Mining and the Process Intelligence Graph to shape the future of AI-driven business operations. - Ownership from Day 1: Every full-time "Celonaut" is an owner, receiving Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) and merit-based refresh grants. - Unrivaled Family Support: Benefit from our inclusive parental leave policy—24 weeks of fully paid leave for primary carers and 12 weeks for supporting carers, available from your first day of employment. - Work-Life Integration: Enjoy Unlimited PTO (in applicable regions) and generous PTO globally, as well as a flexible hybrid work model that balances remote focus with vibrant office collaboration. - Continuous Growth: Elevate your skills through our 70-20-10 learning framework, mentorship programs, and access to a dedicated learning platform. - Holistic Well-being: Prioritize your health with subsidized Wellhub memberships, mental health counseling, and dedicated "Wellness Weeks" that prioritize work/life balance. - Drive Sustainability: Participate in annual Impact Days, where you receive paid time off to volunteer for community and environmental causes with your local office, or virtually. - Global Inclusion & Belonging: Find community through our Inclusion Think Tank and participate in our annual Inclusion Days, ensuring every voice is heard and valued. - Value-Driven Impact: Join a mission-led organization where our core values—Live for Customer Value, The Best Team Wins, We Own It, and Earth Is Our Future—drive every decision. **About Us:** Celonis is the trusted platform to industrialize Enterprise AI, empowering organizations to analyze, design, and operate AI-driven processes. The Celonis Platform is powered by the Celonis Context Model, which combines process data, business knowledge, and intelligence to create a living digital twin of the enterprise that AI can understand — turning AI’s operational blind spots into operational clarity. Industry-leading companies around the world trust Celonis and its global ecosystem of partners to make their AI agents, people, systems, and processes work together, achieving transformational outcomes. Celonis is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and New York City, USA, with more than 20 offices worldwide. Get familiar with the Celonis Process Intelligence Platform by watching this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5oRJGhJYg&list=PLuVor-ZUD4pnM6G33C5D0tjXUvlTPYBRe). **Celonis Inclusion Statement:** At Celonis, we believe our people make us who we are and that “The Best Team Wins”. We know that the best teams are made up of people who bring different perspectives to the table. And when everyone feels included, able to speak up and knows their voice is heard - that's when creativity and innovation happen. **Your Privacy:** Any information you submit to Celonis as part of your application will be processed in accordance with Celonis’ [Accessibility and Candidate Notices](https://www.celonis.com/careers/candidate-notices) By submitting this application, you confirm that you agree to the storing and processing of your personal data by Celonis as described in our [Privacy Notice for the Application and Hiring Process](https://www.celonis.com/careers/privacy-notice/). **Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools** We rely on an artificial intelligence tool to match the information from your resume to the relevant Celonis job descriptions. This processing is limited to the information provided in your resume or in your candidate profile. The tool produces a match score per candidate for a role, suggests preliminary ranking, and provides recommendations. The tool is only used for support in parts of the job application process, including to facilitate the identification of the relevant Celonis Jobs for candidates and recruiters. All final decisions are made by hiring managers and the Celonis talent acquisition team. Hiring managers and HR specialists use this tool responsibly, are aware of the risk of potential bias, and are equipped to mitigate it. Please be aware of common job offer scams, impersonators and frauds. Learn more [here](https://www.celonis.com/careers/fraud-alert/).