Job Specifications
Location & working arrangement
London or Nuneaton, UK
Full-time, Hybrid working
We offer hybrid working, with occasional presence at one of our Holland & Barrett offices in London or Nuneaton (or another designated H&B location) for team meetings, collaboration sessions and key events.
About H&B
At Holland & Barrett, we bring together more than 150 years of heritage with modern digital thinking. Following a significant transformation, we are now a fully cloud-native organisation built on containers, Kubernetes, serverless, and event-driven architectures. Technology is central to how we serve millions of customers, and our ambition is to keep setting new standards in our industry.
We are seeking a visionary Head of Platform to lead the next stage of our engineering journey. This is a rare opportunity to create a greenfield observability platform from the ground up, shaping the way our teams operate, innovate, and deliver at scale.
The Opportunity
Our ambition is to build an operational platform that becomes the backbone of incident management, security operations, and service ownership across the business. The platform will provide a unified view of our entire ecosystem – spanning IoT and network assets through to cloud infrastructure – enabling faster, safer and more reliable delivery.
We are adopting a “platform as a product” mindset: our developers are our customers, and their experience is central to every decision we make. You will define how this product is imagined, built and evolved.
About The Role
As Head of Platform, you will combine strategic leadership with deep technical influence. You will lead talented engineers across SRE, DevOps and DevSecOps disciplines, partnering closely with security and product teams to embed resilience and protection into everything we do.
You will own the vision, architecture and execution of our observability platform while helping to shape a culture of experimentation, craftsmanship and continuous improvement.
Key Responsibilities
Define and deliver the roadmap for a new observability and operational platform
Make critical architectural and technology decisions for a large-scale cloud-native estate
Build, mentor and inspire a high-performing platform engineering organisation
Champion a product-centric approach to internal platforms and developer experience
Partner with security to embed DevSecOps principles by design
Drive adoption of SRE practices to improve reliability, performance and incident response
Collaborate with senior stakeholders to align technology with business outcomes
Key Requirement
Proven experience in a senior technology leadership role (Head of Platform / DevOps / SRE or equivalent)
Deep expertise in SRE, DevOps and DevSecOps practices
Strong background operating large-scale distributed systems in AWS
Hands-on knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes and cloud-native patterns
Experience with serverless and event-driven architectures
Demonstrable success building and leading high-performing engineering teams
Excellent stakeholder engagement and the ability to articulate vision and strategy
Passion for developer experience and treating platforms as products
Familiarity with observability ecosystems such as Prometheus, Grafana, ELK and distributed tracing
Why Join Holland & Barrett?
Build something truly new – with the autonomy to design a platform from first principles
Influence the technology direction of an iconic, purpose-led brand
Work with a forward-thinking leadership team that invests in engineering excellence
Competitive salary and comprehensive benefits
Flexible working that supports real work–life balance
If you are an innovative technology leader motivated by solving complex challenges and creating exceptional developer experiences, we'd love to hear from you.
Apply today and help us build the future of observability at Holland & Barrett.
What We Offer
What we offer:
Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits
Health Cash Plan
Life Assurance
Bonus Scheme - Based on company & personal performance
Virtual GP
Private Medical care
FREE at-home blood test kit
Holiday Purchase option
Pension Contribution scheme
Access to ‘Wellhub' with gyms, studios and wellbeing apps
Discounts & Savings
25% Colleague Discount with FREE Standard Delivery
Exclusive Discounts from a wide range of partners
£/€50 Annual Product Allowance to spend in store
Learning & Development
Access to a variety of learning opportunities, including Level 2-5 Apprenticeships, Workshops and our Digital Learning Library
AND MORE!
Holland and Barrett is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome diverse perspectives and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all colleagues. We understand that when our colleagues are listened to, respected and valued for who they are, we build an organisation with belonging at its heart – making health and wellness a way of life for everyone.
Holland & Barrett does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Pl
About the Company
Holland & Barrett is a leading wellness retailer and one of the largest in Europe. We make health and wellness a way of life for everyone, with a leading range of own brand, innovative vitamins, supplements, specialist food, sports nutrition and ethical beauty brands. Established in 1870, Holland & Barrett has been trusted for wellness for over 150 years and has an omnichannel retail presence of more than 1000 stores across 18 countries worldwide, including over 800 in the UK and Ireland**Holland & Barrett’s colleagues are...
Know more