Technical Lead

At Aiven, our vision is to help developers and builders bring their ideas to life with speed and simplicity by providing a data platform that makes open-source infrastructure easily accessible to everyone. We are now embarking on one of our most ambitious strategic bets to ensure open source thrives on European infrastructure. The Role We are looking for a Technical Lead, Cloud to own the technical execution of our new cloud product. This is a small, high-autonomy team with minimal hierarchy. You are the person who translates vision into architecture, infrastructure and shipped product. You will work directly alongside Aiven's VP Strategy, who owns the strategic direction and business outcomes. Together, you form the leadership pair that makes this thing real. Key Responsibilities Technical Architecture & Decision-Making Own the end-to-end technical architecture for a new cloud product built from the ground up Make the critical build, buy and partner decisions across every layer of the stack, aligning trade-offs with VP Strategy for bets that carry strategic or financial weight Design for the future from day one: the architecture must support a bold long-term vision that you are expected to shape and contribute to Execution & Delivery Build a high-performance, no-ego team of exceptional engineers and product builders Lead the engineering team (backend, frontend, design, architecture) with a relentless bias for shipping while contributing code yourself Own the roadmap and delivery milestones Operate with disciplined scoping and ruthless prioritisation: launch with what matters, proxy what can wait, and never let perfection block progress Work with existing Aiven teams to ensure no misalignment emerges over shared architecture Infrastructure & Operations Build abstraction layers that deliver a first-class cloud experience to developers and agents, regardless of the underlying infrastructure Ensure the platform meets rigorous security, compliance and certification requirements from day one Plan for infrastructure evolution as the product scales Cross-functional Partnership Partner with go-to-market, policy and design leads to ensure the product narrative is technically credible and market-ready Engage directly with early design-partner customers to validate requirements and iterate on the MVP What We're Looking For: You are a principal-level engineer with the ability to operate in an early product environment like a founder. You have built and shipped complex infrastructure products like cloud platforms, managed database services or developer tooling. You know what it takes to go from a blank canvas to paying customers in a short timeline. You have deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure and open-source technologies. You have excellent taste and conviction on how modern cloud infrastructure should be built, and the technical seniority to turn that into simple narratives. Experience with bare metal orchestration, storage systems or European infrastructure providers is a strong plus. You thrive in ambiguity and move fast without waiting for permission. You are a high-energy individual with proven evidence of high-agency problem solving. Amazing! What’s next: If you think Aiven is the place for you and that our Values align with yours, send us your resume and we’ll get in touch!