Vice President, Engineering, Core Platform & Infrastructure

About the role

We are looking for a senior executive in Germany, Munich, to lead our Global Core Platform and Infrastructure function. The VP of Core Platform & Infrastructure is a high-impact engineering executive responsible for the foundational technical layers that power the entire Celonis ecosystem. You will lead the engineering teams that build and operate the "Metadata Platform," the "Platform Core Services" (PCS), and the "Platform Infrastructure" (PI). Your mission is to architect and provide a robust, secure, and scalable technical foundation that allows every Celonaut in the engineering organization to deliver enterprise-ready capabilities with maximum autonomy and minimum friction. The work you'll do: As an organization, we are united through trust as one inclusive, diverse team, and we are passionate about helping our colleagues and clients succeed. Strategic Technical Leadership & Architecture Platform Evolution: Drive the "Bedrock" infrastructure strategy and architecture across AWS, Azure, and GCP, overseeing the Kubernetes platform, Traffic routing (Cilium), and IaC automation (Celoplane/Argo CD). Foundational Excellence: Lead the PCS engineering organization to build and deliver standards-based Identity Management, Provisioning, and Licensing systems that enhance the overall resilience, security, and future-readiness of the Celonis platform backend. Data Infrastructure Stewardship: Manage the technical lifecycle and architecture of the Metadata Platform, engineering secure, high-availability data layers through services like PacMan, RabbitMQ (messaging), and Redis (caching). Internal Developer Experience (DevEx): Continuously evolve our internal tooling and foundational services, empowering internal engineering squads to autonomously deliver scalable capabilities via robust self-service APIs and automated pipelines. Global Market Expansion Infrastructure: Act as the primary technical driver for automated market expansion into new realms via the Orbit platform, ensuring a highly available, trusted foundation for enterprise scaling. Engineering Strategy & Execution Platform Delivery Strategy: Lead the engineering lifecycle for internal tools and core services, driving a culture of technical excellence by defining strict SLAs, developer-centric documentation, and highly reliable self-service architectures for all Celonauts. Cross-Functional Technical Orchestration: Act as the primary technical interface with other Engineering leaders to prioritize foundational "Enterprise-Ready" backend features-such as advanced licensing models and complex identity governance-ensuring they are built and delivered as proactive enablers. Standardization & Modernization: Define and execute the technical roadmap for the deployment of secure, scalable, and standards-based identity and authentication architectures, deprecating and replacing legacy backend mechanisms across the platform. The qualifications you need: Proven Executive Experience: 10+ years in software engineering leadership, specifically managing large-scale cloud-native platforms, infrastructure engineering, and shared service organizations. Technical Depth: Deep, hands-on architectural expertise in Kubernetes, multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP), and modern identity standards (OIDC/SAML/OAuth). Infrastructure Specialist: Significant engineering experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), automated routing/connectivity (Cilium), and global realm automation at an enterprise scale. Platform Engineering Mindset: A strong focus on building robust Internal Developer Platforms (IDP), balancing the technical scaling needs of internal developer squads with strict enterprise architecture and security requirements. Data Services Proficiency: Solid technical understanding of managing and scaling distributed data services, including block/object storage, messaging layers (RabbitMQ), and caching (Redis). Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field required; Advanced degree, PhD, or similar preferred. 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