Head of Platform Engineering & Developer Experience (Platform CoE) (d/f/m)

About this Position
The Head of Platform Engineering & Developer Experience (Platform CoE) leads the design, delivery, and continuous improvement of Henkel's Internal Developer Platform (IDP), SDLC toolchain, observability landscape, and engineering productivity ecosystem. This role ensures that developers across Henkel can build, deploy, and operate software quickly, securely, and reliably by providing consistent, automated, and self-service platform capabilities. As part of the Technical Domain Engineering leadership team, the role is responsible for developer-centric engineering, building standardized golden paths, governing CI/CD pipelines, establishing AIOps and observability practices, and driving DevOps adoption across the organization. The Head of Platform Engineering collaborates deeply with Cloud CoE, Cybersecurity, Enterprise Architecture, and product teams to enable frictionless engineering workflows and world-class developer experience.
What you'll do

• Internal Developer Platform (IDP) Ownership
• Own, design, and evolve the Henkel Internal Developer Platform (IDP) to offer self-service onboarding, automation, and integration services for product teams.
• Ensure the IDP provides standardized patterns, reusable modules, and seamless integration with cloud platforms.2. SDLC, Toolchain & CI/CD Governance
• Lead the global engineering toolchain including GitHub Enterprise, CI/CD pipelines, artifact management, and pipeline templates
• Standardize the complete software development supply chain (SDLC) across all business units
• Define guardrails, best practices, and policies to ensure secure and compliant delivery pipelines
• Developer Experience & Golden Paths
• Create and maintain golden paths, IaC templates, and reusable engineering patterns to streamline development and reduce cognitive load
• Drive developer productivity improvements through automation, standardization, and simplification
• Observability, Monitoring & AIOps
• Lead enterprise-wide observability, log management, and monitoring initiatives in partnership with OCC and Cloud CoE
• Implement AIOps capabilities to increase automation, reduce toil, and enable predictive operations
• DevOps Enablement
• Enable DevOps ways of working-without creating separate DevOps teams-by embedding DevOps practices, tooling, and mindset into product teams
• Provide coaching, frameworks, and enablement programs for adopting CI/CD, GitOps, SRE, and automatio

What makes you a good fit

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent
• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, DevOps, or developer tooling
• Proven experience leading platform or developer productivity teams in complex enterprises
• Strong expertise with CI/CD ecosystems, GitHub Enterprise, pipeline governance, and SDLC automation
• Deep understanding of Internal Developer Platforms, golden paths, and Platform Engineering best practices
• Hands-on experience with observability stacks, logging platforms, and AIOps technologies
• Proficiency in Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Helm, Ansible) and Policy-as-Code frameworks
• Experience enabling DevOps practices (CI/CD, GitOps, automation, SRE principles)
• Strong leadership and organizational development capabilities
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate across engineering, security, and business teams
• Customer-centric mindset focused on developer experience and productivity
• Ability to simplify complexity, standardize processes, and drive enterprise-wide adoption

Some perks of joining Henkel

• Flexible work scheme with flexible hours, hybrid work model, and work from anywhere policy for up to 30 days per year
• Diverse national and international growth opportunities
• Global wellbeing standards with health and preventive care programs
• Gender-neutral parental leave for a minimum of 8 weeks
• Employee Share Plan with voluntary investment and Henkel matching shares
• Company Pension Plan 100% financed by Henkel
• MEGA Preventive Health Insurance
• CareFlex Supplementary Care Insurance
• Mobility offer: My Henkel Bike and Jobticket

At Henkel, we come from a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences. We believe the uniqueness of all our employees is the power in us. Become part of the team and bring your uniqueness to us! We welcome all applications across different genders, origins, cultures, religions, sexual orientations, generations and disabilities. If there are any specific accommodations or adjustments you require for the interview process or your on-site appointment, please inform us, and we'll do our best to accommodate your requests.