Platform Operations Manager in London

ABOUT US: At Talon, our mission is to unlock the full potential of out of home, making it more effective, creative, measurable and sustainable than ever. We’re passionate about OOH and are on a mission to drive the growth of this sector within the media industry. In just over a decade, our desire to offer intelligent, creative, technology-led OOH solutions and a full-service OOH offering saw us grow into a team of over 450+ people located in key cities across the globe. In that time, we have been awarded for our approach to our people, our clients and our industry. We hire the finest talent to help us unlock the full potential of the Out of Home (OOH) environment for our clients; and pride ourselves on the individuals who represent our business.

THE ROLE: As a Platform Operations Manager at Talon Outdoor, you will be responsible for the reliability, performance, and continuous improvement of our platform stack. This is a senior, hands-on leadership role combining deep technical expertise with team management and operational ownership.

You will lead a team of platform engineers, drive operational excellence, and act as the key interface between business stakeholders, engineering, and external partners. Alongside overseeing day-to-day support, you will define strategy, improve processes, and ensure our platforms scale effectively to support global business operations.

RESPONSIBILITIES AND RELATIONSHIPS:

• Operational Ownership: Own the end-to-end operation, availability, and performance of core business platforms. Oversee 1st/2nd line support escalation, acting as the senior point of contact for critical issues. Lead major incident management, root cause analysis, and post-incident reviews.
• Technical Leadership: Provide hands-on technical guidance across cloud infrastructure, application support, and DevOps practices. Drive automation, monitoring, and observability improvements across the platform stack. Participate in regular review meetings with engineering teams to assess performance, identify improvements, and drive continuous optimisation. Ensure best practices in operations, scalability, and reliability are implemented.
• Leadership & Team Management: Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Platform Operations Engineers, setting clear objectives and performance standards. Manage team capacity, shift coverage (including North American EST support), and incident response models. Foster a high-performance, accountable, and collaborative team culture. Drive hiring, onboarding, and ongoing development of team members.
• Stakeholder Management: Act as the primary bridge between business teams, engineering, and third-party integrations. Translate business requirements into technical solutions and operational improvements. Communicate effectively with senior stakeholders on platform health, risks, and roadmap.
• Continuous Improvement: Define and implement operational processes, runbooks, and standards. Identify recurring issues and drive long-term fixes through engineering collaboration. Lead initiatives to improve efficiency, reduce manual effort, and enhance user experience. Contribute to platform roadmap planning and prioritisation.
• Global Collaboration: Work across UK, US, and offshore teams to ensure seamless global support. Align processes and standards across regions for consistency and scalability.

WORKING HABITS AND CORE SKILLS:

• Demonstrate self-motivation and the ability to work both independently and collaboratively.
• Bring innovative thinking and problem-solving skills to the team.
• Proactively engage with customers, engineering teams to deliver high-quality outcomes.
• Approach work with conscientiousness and a commitment to excellence.
• Share knowledge willingly and pursue personal development opportunities.

YOUR EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS:

• Proven experience in an application support role or similar technical position.
• Familiarity with Agile and DevOps methodologies.
• Proficiency in using DevOps tools like AWS, Terraform, and Docker in production environments.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Proficiency in at least one scripting or object-oriented programming language.
• Experience with SQL scripting and database servers such as SQL Server and MongoDB.
• Proficiency in configuration management, automation, and orchestration tools.
• Experience in the media domain is advantageous.
• Knowledge of APIs and microservices is desirable.
• Experience working with Java and MongoDB technologies is a plus.

OUR VALUES AND HOW WE WORK TOGETHER:

• WE ARE BOLD: As industry provocateurs and pioneers, we respectfully challenge the status quo, take pride in our people, big ideas and partnerships. We embrace change, we challenge respectfully, we lead the way.
• WE ARE HUMAN: We are a diverse collective of changemakers who value respect, fairness, and integrity and expect the same in return. We value collaboration and togetherness, we are empathetic, we embrace individuality.
• WE ARE SMART: Our trailblazing spirit and learning centric culture ensures our knowledge provides maximum value to each other and our clients. We grow and learn, we are trusted, we are mission possible.

Talon is an equal opportunities employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment where all individuals can thrive. We seek to employ and develop a workforce representative of the markets that we serve and brands that we represent.