Platform Engineering & Developer Experience Lead

Who We Are 🩵

We’re the people behind the global loyalty currency, Avios, and home to three ambitious, growing businesses; IAG Loyalty, British Airways Holidays and The Wine Flyer. Each business has its own goals and strategy, but collectively we create brilliant experiences for our global customers. 

We’re on a truly exciting journey of growth and transformation – we’re going places! This is where you come in.

The Opportunity ✨

We’re seeking a strategic leader to drive our engineering enablement strategy and deliver a world-class developer experience across IAG Loyalty and BA Holidays.

You will lead four teams: Platform Engineering (cloud, data platforms, developer tooling), Backstage (internal developer portal), API Developer Portal (external partner integrations), and QA Engineering (central QA strategy).

This role blends technical insight with strong leadership. You’ll set strategy, guide teams, influence decisions, manage budgets, and oversee both permanent and contract staff, building strong relationships with internal teams and external partners.

If you’re passionate about creating seamless developer experiences and enabling high-performing teams at scale, this is your opportunity to make a real impact.

This role is based out of our London office. We call our approach to hybrid working The Blend — it’s about giving you the flexibility to choose where you do your best work, while staying connected with your team and the wider business. This means you will be required to spend at least two days per week in the office, with the rest of the time working from home. You may also be required to work from one of our other office or partner locations, based on your role and 'to do' list.

What You’Ll Be Doing 🌠

In this role, you will provide strategic leadership for our Platform Engineering, Backstage, API Developer Portal, and QA Engineering teams, setting the vision and direction while aligning emerging industry trends with business priorities across IAG Loyalty and BA Holidays. You will lead and inspire a large, multi-disciplinary team of Tech Leads, Engineers, Technical Product Managers, and QA specialists, providing coaching, mentoring, and career development for both permanent staff and contractors. Your guidance will ensure the teams are empowered, motivated, and equipped to deliver excellence at scale.

You will take ownership of our central cloud and data platforms, ensuring the right guardrails are in place to allow autonomous working while maintaining high platform standards. Balancing the delivery of new features with operational stability, you will support all product and data teams to work efficiently and effectively. At the same time, you will define and drive the developer experience strategy for internal teams and external partners, overseeing the evolution of portals and tools to reduce friction, accelerate onboarding, and enhance self-service capabilities.

You will also build and maintain strong relationships across the business, acting as a trusted advisor on platform capabilities, technical enablement, and developer experience. A key part of your role will be championing continuous improvement across processes, tooling, and engineering culture, encouraging the adoption of modern practices such as DevOps, CI/CD, and observability at scale. Your influence will shape the way teams work, enabling high performance and delivering a world-class developer experience across IAG Loyalty and BA Holidays.

What We’Re Looking For 💡

• Senior leader with experience in platform engineering, developer experience, or related technical domains, ideally leading multiple teams.
• Strategic thinker who can set vision and turn it into actionable roadmaps with measurable outcomes.
• Strong engineering or architecture background, with expertise in cloud platforms (AWS preferred), data platforms, developer tooling, and modern software delivery.
• Track record in developer enablement, delivering platforms, portals, and tools that improve internal and external experiences.
• Excellent stakeholder management, able to influence at all levels and align teams around a common vision.
• Commercially and operationally savvy, with experience managing budgets, contracts, and vendor relationships.
• Inspiring people leader, passionate about coaching and retaining high-performing teams.
• Clear communicator, able to operate across technical and executive levels.
• Collaborative, pragmatic, and comfortable in a fast-paced, evolving environment.

We Might Not Be Right For You If:

• You only want to focus on your to-do list; we’re a small, high-performing team, we help each other to succeed. 
• You value perfection over fast iteration and progress; IAG Loyalty moves fast, we learn and iterate as we go; our environment isn’t right for everyone. 
• You’re looking to create but not build; this is an end-to-end role, you need to be comfortable owning your space, from ideation through to delivery and review. 

If you think you have what it takes but don't meet every single point above, please do still apply. We'd love to chat and see if you could be a great fit.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at IAG Loyalty

Our vision, 'to create the world's most rewarding experiences,' applies not only to our customers but for our colleagues too. It's about taking belonging seriously, actively fostering a culture where everyone feels welcomed and valued by embracing diverse identities, personal histories, and perspectives.

This commitment makes IAG Loyalty a rewarding place to work and enhances our ability to solve complex problems, drive innovation, and better serve our customers and communities.

Please let us know if we can make any reasonable adjustments to support your interview process with us.