Team Lead, Infra (Giger)

Who we are is what we do.

Deel is the all-in-one payroll and HR platform for global teams. Our vision is to unlock global opportunity for every person, team, and business. Built for the way the world works today, Deel combines HRIS, payroll, compliance, benefits, performance, and equipment management into one seamless platform. With AI-powered tools and a fully owned payroll infrastructure, Deel supports every worker type in 150+ countries—helping businesses scale smarter, faster, and more compliantly.

Among the largest globally distributed companies in the world, our team of 7,000 spans more than 100 countries, speaks 74 languages, and brings a connected and dynamic culture that drives continuous learning and innovation for our customers.

Why should you be part of our success story?

As the fastest-growing Software as a Service (SaaS) company in history, Deel is transforming how global talent connects with world-class companies – breaking down borders that have traditionally limited both hiring and career opportunities. We're not just building software; we're creating the infrastructure for the future of work, enabling a more diverse and inclusive global economy. In 2024 alone, we paid $11.2 billion to workers in nearly 100 currencies and provided healthcare and benefits to workers in 109 countries—ensuring people get paid and protected, no matter where they are.

Our momentum is reflected in our achievements and customer satisfaction: CNBC Disruptor 50,  Forbes Cloud 100, Deloitte Fast 500, and repeated recognition on Y Combinator’s top companies list – all while maintaining a 4.83 average rating from 15,000 reviews across G2, Trustpilot, Captera, Apple and Google.

Your experience at Deel will be a career accelerator. At the forefront of the global work revolution, you'll tackle complex challenges that impact millions of people's working lives. With our momentum—backed by a $17.3 billion valuation and $1 B in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in just over five years—you'll drive meaningful impact while building expertise that makes you a sought-after leader in the transformation of global work.

What the Developer Sandboxes team does

The Giger team builds and maintains one of Deel's most powerful internal platforms: a sandbox system that enables engineers to develop, test, and deploy faster than ever. Giger allows product teams to spin up fully functional, production-like environments in minutes, complete with real databases, services, queues, and storage. Each sandbox is completely isolated, empowering teams to experiment freely, test infrastructure changes, and validate code safely at scale.

We operate the largest Kubernetes cluster at Deel (1000 nodes, 35k pods) and spin up 300 sandboxes daily for hundreds of engineers across 200+ product teams.

We sit at the intersection of platform engineering and developer experience – building the control plane, tooling, and infrastructure primitives that hundreds of Deel engineers depend on every day.

The Impact You’ll Have

As Team Lead of the Giger team at Deel, you will lead a focused team of 6-8 engineers distributed across the globe (from India to Colombia), with an equal balance of leadership and hands-on technical work. You will drive the technical vision for our developer sandbox platform, mentor your team, and own the architecture and execution of one of Deel's most strategically important internal products. In this role, technical depth is not optional. You will stay close to the architecture, code and infrastructure while simultaneously shaping the roadmap, raising the team's bar, providing support to engineers and building the culture that thrives in Deel’s fast paced environment

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 the platform for developer sandboxes from control plane to the underlying infrastructure within each sandbox. We operate the largest k8s clusters at Deel.

Strategize and Execute for Impact

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for the Giger platform in alignment with organizational goals
• Lead innovation in developer sandbox infrastructure: faster spin-up, smarter resource utilization, better observability, richer self-service capabilities, cell-based multi-region architecture
• Represent Giger in cross-functional discussions, aligning platform capabilities with business objectives
• Make principled architectural decisions on cost, scalability, and reliability at scale

Build Teams and Foster Culture

• 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
• Hire selectively as the team grows, partner with recruiting on the current open roles

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
• 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
• 5+ years of experience in infrastructure: AWS/GCP, Kubernetes, Helm, GitOps, CNCF landscape – not only using it but setting it up and maintaining at scale
• 3+ years of experience managing and mentoring engineers, with a proven ability to lead cross-functional distributed teams of 6+ people across multiple timezones
• Experience with Postgres/MySQL
• Experience with Nats/Kafka and building event-driven architectures on top of it
• Proven experience in designing and architecting distributed systems with high-performance, scalability, and availability demands
• Experience operating Kubernetes clusters at scale (1000+ nodes, 30k+ pods) – including capacity planning, scheduling, and cost optimization
• Experience designing and operating systems that extend Kubernetes – whether by building operators and controllers, integrating and customizing third-party ones or architecting custom platform primitives on top of Kubernetes APIs.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal

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

• 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

• Have built internal developer platforms (in-house or with tools like Okteto, Gitpod, Crafting) or Kubernetes operators
• Have production experience with Postgres Operators, e.g. CloudNativePG or Zalando
• Have multi-region and multi-cloud experience

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

• 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 optional WeWork access

At Deel, we’re an equal-opportunity employer that values diversity and positively encourage applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of  race, religion, sex, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, pregnancy or maternity or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

Unless otherwise agreed, we will communicate with job applicants using Deel-specific emails, which include @deel.com and other acquired company emails like @payspace.com and @paygroup.com. You can view the most up-to-date job listings at Deel by visiting our careers page.

Deel is an equal-opportunity employer and is committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace that reflects different abilities, backgrounds, beliefs, experiences, identities and perspectives.

Deel will provide accommodations on request throughout the recruitment, selection and assessment process for applicants with disabilities. If you require accommodations, please inform our Talent Acquisition Team via this link and a team member will be in touch to ensure your equal participation. If you have difficulty accessing the form, please email at recruiting@deel.com.

As part of our hiring process, we primarily rely on interviews and role-related assessments. In limited cases, we may also consider informal background information relevant to the role, in line with our privacy and fairness obligations.

This application process does utilise Automated Employment Decision Tools (AEDT) and AI systems to assist in evaluating candidates based on experience level, technical skills and qualifications. As a fully remote company, we also utilise AI-powered deepfake and fraud detection technologies to verify the authenticity of candidate identities and interactions during assessments and interviews. This processing is conducted in compliance with applicable Data Protection, AI Governance and Labour Laws. We ensure human oversight is maintained in all final hiring decisions. Your personal data is not used to train AI models. For more information on how we process your personal data, please see our Privacy Policy.

• For NYC Residents: In accordance with NYC Local Law 144, an independent bias audit has been conducted on AEDT; results are available at Ashby, Covey.