team lead, infra engineering

The team was created to support Deel engineering growth and build a platform for product teams, so they could ship business value faster. Deel is at a very unique position because we are big enough that we need the platform but we are young enough to not have it yet. There is a dedicated DevOps team and they take care of the infrastructure: AWS, networking, k8s clusters, Terraform, CI/CD, while we work on the edge between DevOps and engineering enforcing standards and best practices, creating tooling, maintaining internal libraries, providing architectural guidance and owning some high-loaded core services, improving observability and responding to production incidents when needed. We own and maintain self-hosted RabbitMQ, NATS and SpiceDB clusters across all our environments. It’s 65% Engineering and 35% Infrastructure. Also, a decent amount of our time goes to support engineers in regards to the services we own. The team has a lot of freedom, but it comes with a lot of responsibility.

The Impact You’ll Have:

As a Team Lead at Deel, you will lead a cross-functional team of 6-10 professionals spread across multiple zones (from India to Brazil) with a balance of leadership (70%) and hands-on technical work (30%). You will drive technical excellence, mentor your team, and deliver scalable, resilient solutions in a fast-paced, startup-like environment. By fostering collaboration and adopting best practices, you will ensure the team meets organizational goals and provides the platform and required support to meet our engineering org demands.

Get Ready To:

Lead with Excellence:

• Serve as a leader of a strong distributed team driving decision-making, architecture reviews and ensuring day-to-day operations
• Provide mentorship and technical guidance, fostering growth and skill development within the team
• Ensure best practices in development, testing, and deployment, driving innovation and excellence
• Manage on-call shifts and provide support for engineering in dedicated channels
• Own, maintain and ensure stability of critical pieces of infrastructure in all our environments including Nats, RabbitMQ, SpiceDB clusters

Elevate Team and Organizational Effectiveness:

• Drive planning and execution, balancing tactical wins with long-term objectives
• Implement and standardize best practices for engineering across teams keeping the bar high both for the team and organization
• Facilitate knowledge sharing, cross-team collaboration, and continuous improvement
• Build processes to provide support to engineering and ensure reliability of critical infrastructure

Strategize and Execute for Impact:

• Define and implement strategic projects in alignment with organizational goals
• Lead innovation through rapid prototyping, iterative development, and problem-solving
• Represent infrastructure in cross-functional discussions, aligning technical requirements with business objectives

Build Teams and Foster Culture:

• Play an active role in hiring and scaling the team, ensuring alignment with company values
• Manage performance cycles, provide structured feedback, and support the professional growth of team members
• Cultivate a culture of collaboration, inclusion, continuous learning, and engineering excellence
• Champion diversity and foster an environment where all team members thrive

Lead Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Work closely with DevOps, DBA and InfoSec teams to align on organizational goals
• Coordinate efforts across teams to drive complex projects and ensure shared objectives are met
• Communicate technical challenges, opportunities, and solutions effectively to stakeholders
• Push back on product decisions when necessary, presenting well-reasoned arguments to prioritize technical health, scalability, and long-term success
• Resolve complex, multi-team technical challenges by fostering collaboration across disciplines

What You’ll Bring:

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with expertise in Node.js, JavaScript/TypeScript or Go/Python
• 3+ years of experience in infrastructure: AWS/GCP, Kubernetes, Helm, GitOps, CI/CD, not only using it but setting it up
• 2+ years of experience managing and mentoring engineers, with a proven ability to lead cross-functional teams of 5+ people
• Experience with Postgres/MySQL
• Experience managing Kafka/Nats and building event driven architectures on top of it
• Proficiency in automated unit, functional, and integration testing
• Proven experience in designing and architecting distributed systems with high-performance, scalability, and availability demands
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal. You will need to drive initiatives across 50+ engineering teams
• Experience building 24/7 incident response processes

You’re the Leader We’re Looking For if You:

• You are based between UTC and UTC+3
• Thrive in environments requiring both technical expertise and leadership
• Combine strategic vision with attention to detail in decision-making
• Demonstrate a commitment to collaboration, continuous learning, and team success
• Drive innovation while balancing immediate goals with long-term technical health

Bonus points:

• You have past experience in Platform engineering
• Knowledge across multiple tech stacks and technical domains

Total Rewards

Our workforce deserves fair and competitive pay that meets them where they are. With scalable benefits, rewards, and perks, our total rewards programs reflect our commitment to inclusivity and access for all. 

Some things you’ll enjoy

• Provided computer equipment tailored to your role
• Stock grant opportunities dependent on your role, employment status and location
• Additional perks and benefits based on your employment status and country
• The flexibility of remote work, including WeWork access where available