Platform Product Lead

About the role

Toolstation, part of the Travis Perkins group, is seeking a Platform Product Lead to own and evolve its cloud platform. This hybrid role blends product management with hands‑on engineering, focusing on delivering AI‑enabled capabilities and ensuring platform reliability and cost efficiency.

Key responsibilities

• Own the GCP/GKE runtime, API gateway, Kafka backbone, and identity/security platform, defining roadmaps and service levels.
• Lead the Gemini agent platform (including Anthropic models), establishing reusable patterns and governance for safe AI delivery.
• Write and review infrastructure‑as‑code (OpenTofu/Terraform, Helm, FluxCD) and CI pipelines, staying hands‑on with the technology.
• Manage cloud FinOps, tracking spend, availability, and end‑of‑life exposure.
• Provide technical direction, drive modernisation programmes, and oversee architecture reviews.
• Manage vendor relationships (Google Cloud, Confluent, Tyk, Datadog) and grow the platform engineering team.

Required profile

• Extensive production experience with Kubernetes on Google Cloud (GKE) and large‑scale estates.
• Deep practical fluency in Terraform/OpenTofu and GitOps tools such as FluxCD or Argo CD.
• Proven ability to treat the platform as a product, with roadmaps, adoption metrics, and service‑level ownership.
• Strong commercial acumen in cloud FinOps, vendor negotiation, and communicating technical debt to executives.

Required skills

• Kubernetes
• Google Cloud Platform (GKE)
• Terraform / OpenTofu
• Helm
• FluxCD / Argo CD
• CI/CD pipelines
• Kafka
• AI model integration (Gemini, Anthropic)
• Cloud FinOps

What we offer

• Competitive salary with bonus and benefits
• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays
• Company pension and life assurance
• 20% discount across all Travis Perkins companies
• Recognition awards and discounts at over 1,000 retailers