Team Lead, Infra (Giger)

Deel, Inc.

Job Overview

Location

EMEA

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Lead a distributed team of 6–8 engineers across global time zones, combining hands-on technical work with leadership responsibilities to drive the development and maintenance of Deel’s Giger sandbox platform.
• Architect, own, and scale the largest Kubernetes cluster at Deel (1,000 nodes, 35,000 pods), ensuring high availability, performance, and cost efficiency for daily operations that spin up 300 production-like developer sandboxes.
• Design and implement infrastructure primitives and control plane systems that enable hundreds of engineers across 200+ product teams to rapidly spin up isolated, fully functional environments with real databases, services, queues, and storage.
• Define and execute the technical roadmap for the Giger platform, prioritizing innovation in sandbox spin-up speed, resource utilization, observability, self-service capabilities, and cell-based multi-region architecture.
• Mentor and grow engineering talent through structured feedback, performance cycles, and technical guidance, fostering a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and engineering excellence.
• Manage on-call rotations and provide direct support to engineering teams via dedicated channels, ensuring platform stability and rapid resolution of critical infrastructure issues.
• Maintain and optimize the underlying infrastructure within each sandbox, including Kubernetes operators, custom controllers, and integrations with CNCF ecosystem tools such as Helm and GitOps workflows.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with DevOps, DBA, and InfoSec teams to align platform capabilities with security, compliance, and organizational objectives, resolving multi-team technical challenges through coordinated execution.
• Make principled architectural decisions balancing scalability, reliability, and cost at massive scale, with deep involvement in system design from control plane to underlying resource allocation.
• Represent the Giger platform in strategic discussions with product and engineering leadership, translating technical capabilities into business impact and aligning platform development with company-wide goals.
• Drive adoption of best practices in development, testing, and deployment, embedding automation, observability, and infrastructure-as-code into the team’s daily workflows.
• Hire selectively as the team grows, partnering with recruiting to source and assess top-tier engineering talent with expertise in platform engineering and distributed systems.
• Operate and extend Kubernetes at scale by building or customizing operators and controllers, integrating third-party CNCF tools, and architecting platform-level abstractions that simplify developer workflows.
• Ensure the platform meets stringent requirements for isolation, performance, and durability, supporting critical development and testing activities that directly accelerate product delivery across Deel’s global engineering organization.
• Maintain deep technical engagement with the codebase, infrastructure, and operational systems while simultaneously leading strategic planning, team development, and cross-team alignment.

🎯 Requirements

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with expertise in Node.js, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, or Python
• 5+ years of infrastructure experience with AWS/GCP, Kubernetes, Helm, GitOps, and the CNCF ecosystem, including hands-on setup and maintenance at scale
• 3+ years of experience managing and mentoring engineers, leading cross-functional distributed teams of 6+ members across multiple time zones
• Proven experience operating Kubernetes clusters at scale (1,000+ nodes, 30,000+ pods), including capacity planning, scheduling, and cost optimization
• Experience designing and architecting distributed systems with high performance, scalability, and availability demands
• Experience with Postgres/MySQL and event-driven architectures using NATS/Kafka

🏖️ Benefits

• Stock grant opportunities dependent on role, employment status, and location
• Additional perks and benefits tailored to employment status and country of residence
• Flexibility of remote work, including optional WeWork access

Skills & Technologies

Python

JavaScript

TypeScript

Node.js

PostgreSQL

Senior

Remote

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Deel, Inc.

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About Deel, Inc.

Deel is a San Francisco-based payroll and compliance platform that enables businesses to hire, pay, and manage contractors and employees in over 150 countries. It automates onboarding, localized contracts, tax filings, and payments while ensuring adherence to local labor laws. The cloud software integrates with HR and accounting systems, offers visa and immigration support, and provides employer-of-record services for companies without local entities. Founded in 2019, Deel serves thousands of remote-first and distributed organizations, helping them scale global teams quickly and reduce administrative overhead associated with international employment.

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