Head of Platform & Technology (100%)

Welcome to **Xelon** – where technology meets innovation and customer centricity. As we continue to expand, we are looking for a **Head of** **Platform &** **Technology** **(100%)** **Member of the Management Team** to join our team. In this role, you will own our entire technical organization. This is not a coordination role. This is not a committee seat. You will be the single technical leader at Xelon — responsible for the platform, the product, the team, and customer-facing architecture work. When technical decisions are made at Xelon, you make them. At **Xelon**, we deliver secure, scalable, and automated Swiss cloud infrastructure for the next generation of digital services. From **IaaS** to **SaaS**, our platform powers workloads in regulated industries like **technology**, **finance, insurance,** **and** **public services**. Our solutions - **Xelon Cloud**, **Xelon Secure+** and **Xelon HQ** combine reliability, automation, sovereignty, and simplicity in one ecosystem. We are on a mission to become the **#1 Swiss Cloud Enabler**, and we are growing a team of people who want to shape the future of cloud infrastructure and software operations. **Your role and your responsibilities** The **Head of Platform & Technology** role is responsible for leading Xelon’s entire technical organization and ensuring strategic clarity, operational excellence, and strong cross-functional alignment across platform, product, architecture, and technical leadership. Your key areas of responsibility include: **Technical Leadership** * Lead, develop, and grow the technical team of 10 (3 direct reports). * Build a culture of ownership, accountability, and mutual trust. **Platform** * Overall ownership of the Xelon Platform - consisting of the Xelon Public Cloud and Private Clouds as well as ancillary services and the proprietary cloud management platform Xelon HQ. * Be the primary point of contact for the CEO in all technical matters. * Design cloud and hybrid infrastructures tailored to customer needs (VMware, Kubernetes), ensuring scalability, high availability, and cost-effectiveness. * Produce and maintain architecture documentation, including blueprints, data flow diagrams, and system integration overviews. * Collaborate with Engineering and DevOps to ensure solutions are implemented consistently and align with Xelon’s technology strategy. * Integrate compliance and security standards (SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR). **Product** * Own the product roadmap from insight to delivery. Define what Xelon builds next and make it commercially compelling. * Translate customer requirements into cost models and technical feasibility assessments. **Artificial** **Intelligence** * Lead Xelon's AI Council and drive AI secure, compliant AI adoption across the company. * Help building AI-focused service offerings. **IT Operations** * Act as strategic counterpart to the Cloud Infrastructure Lead - owning infrastructure direction, incident escalation governance, and the roadmap toward a converged platform operations model. * Support on call organization on exceptional basis. **DevOps** * Act as strategic counterpart to the DevOps Lead - owning CI/CD and toolchain direction, Cloudpilot split coordination, and the roadmap toward a converged platform operations model. **Information Security** * Act as strategic counterpart to the Information Security Lead. **Solution Architecture** * Lead customer-facing cloud and Kubernetes engagements. * Act as a technical advisor in customer workshops, discovery sessions, and RFP processes. * Provide technical validation for offers and onboarding plans to ensure feasibility and alignment with Xelon’s platform. * Support Sales with technical solution narratives, contributing to a stronger value proposition for prospects. * Develop reusable templates and solution patterns to shorten pre-sales cycles and ensure consistency in delivery. **Finance** * Own overall Platform & Technology budget. * Orchestrate Platform & Technology spend management. **Who you are** The most important thing you bring on day one is not a certification. It is the drive to take ownership of everything technical at Xelon - and the ability to bring your team along with you. * You walk into a new company and ask 'What needs fixing?' before 'What is my process?' * You make your team better - through clarity, presence, and genuine investment in their growth. * You earn customer trust by listening carefully and architecting with precision. * You are direct with leadership - you say what is broken and what you need. * You think in outcomes: what ships, what works, what customers can buy. * You stay close enough to the technology to challenge, validate and guide - without becoming the execution bottleneck for the teams. **Must-haves** * **Technical** **expertise:** At least 10 years of experience in the area of cloud, IT infrastructure, datacenter services, hosting, networking and/or virtualization. * **Leadership:** Proven track record leading a technical team of 5+ people - trust and accountability, not just authority * **Managing technical progress:** Experience leading technology organizations through platform transitions, structural change or scaling phases * **K8s:** Hands-on Kubernetes expertise - you design and validate K8s architectures yourself * **Cloud:** Hands-on Cloud experience - public, hybrid, private clouds; hyperscaler solutions; IaaS, PaaS, SaaS. * **Product:** Product ownership experience - you have defined and driven a product roadmap, not just contributed * **The ownership drive:** you take initiative, close gaps, and do not wait to be told * **(Swiss) German & English:** You speak both German and English fluently and you are able to communicate confidently and flawlessly in both - in spoken and in written form. Additionally, you are able to effortlessly follow a conversation in Swiss German. **Nice-to-haves** * **Entrepreneurial Spirit:** You are characterized by a self-motivated drive to explore new opportunities, a willingness to take initiative as well as to seek and provide solutions and a strong commitment to contribute to a culture of continuous improvement. * **Swiss German and other** **additional** **Languages:** Any language additional to the required ones is considered a plus; Swiss German is an asset in this role. * **A feel for processes:** You contribute ideas on how we can further optimize internal and customer-facing processes. **What Xelon Offers** * **Rewarding compensation:** Competitive salary with performance-based incentives tied to the company's growth and success. * A **senior leadership role** with real authority over technical direction and meaningful influence on company strategy. You have a dedicated seat in the management team of the company, and you step on a clear path to becoming CTO as the company grows. * **Young,** **dynamic** **& capable** **team:** You take over a capable team that wants strong, clear leadership. Together we build the next Swiss cloud platform as we achieve our goals and celebrate our successes. * **Creative freedom:** The opportunity to make own and guide technical roadmap of a well-established tech scale-up. * **Flexible working hours & remote options:** Work when and where you are most productive. **Join our mission** Do you feel like you are the person that would complete our team? Are you ready for a new challenge? Then apply now! We look forward to hearing from you **The Xelon Team**