Site Reliability Engineer - Data Engineering

Talenza; Sydney; On-site; AUD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Global Trading Firm in Sydney seeks an experienced Site Reliability Engineer to join a high‑performing Data Engineering team. You will operate a multi‑petabyte data platform, ensuring reliability, scalability and efficient deployments.

You will work hands-on with Linux, Kafka, HDFS, Dremio and in-house tooling, focusing on operational excellence and automation. This role offers genuine ownership and growth in a distributed, production environment.

Qualifications

• 2–3 years in an SRE/platform/infrastructure/production engineering role.
• Strong Linux troubleshooting across processes, filesystems, networking and memory pressure.
• Hands-on operator experience with Kafka, HDFS or Kubernetes (deployed/configured/upgraded/tuned).
• Experience operating self-managed infrastructure (bare metal, data centre, self-run VMs or self-managed Kubernetes).
• Python experience for automation, health checks or deployment workflows.
• Exposure to Docker, Kubernetes, Helm and infrastructure-focused CI/CD.
• Curious, pragmatic mindset with interest in how complex systems behave under pressure.

Responsibilities

• Run, monitor and improve large-scale data platforms including Kafka, HDFS, Dremio and in-house pipelines.
• Troubleshoot production issues across Linux, storage, networking and distributed infrastructure.
• Build automation and CI/CD to speed up deployments and improve safety and repeatability.
• Support upgrades, capacity planning, incident response and long-term reliability improvements.
• Collaborate with systems and network engineers, developers, researchers and end users to solve platform problems.
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies as the environment evolves.

Skills

Linux troubleshooting

Python automation

Tools

Kafka

HDFS

Kubernetes

Docker

Helm

Terraform

Ansible

Puppet

Airflow

Presto

Dremio

Job description

Site Reliability Engineer - Data Platform

Sydney | Global Trading Firm

Join a global trading firm's high-performing Data Engineering team and help operate the large-scale platform that underpins trader research, simulation, reporting and decision-making.

This is a proper infrastructure role-not one for someone who has only built data pipelines on top of managed services. You'll get hands‑on with the underlying platform: Kafka, HDFS, Dremio, Linux and in‑house data tooling across a multi‑petabyte environment processing around two million queries each day.

You'll join a small, experienced Sydney team with international engineering counterparts, giving you genuine ownership, strong mentoring and exposure to complex distributed systems at meaningful scale.

The role

• Run, monitor and improve large‑scale data platforms including Kafka, HDFS, Dremio and internally built pipelines.
• Troubleshoot real production issues across Linux, storage, networking and distributed infrastructure.
• Build automation and CI/CD capability to make deployments faster, safer and more repeatable.
• Support upgrades, capacity planning, incident response and long‑term reliability improvements.
• Work closely with systems and network engineers, developers, researchers and end users to solve complex data‑platform problems.
• Help evaluate and introduce new technology as the environment continues to evolve.

What we're looking for

• Around 2-3 years' experience in an SRE, platform, infrastructure, systems or production engineering role.
• Strong Linux troubleshooting skills across processes, filesystems, networking, disk and memory pressure.
• Hands‑on operator experience with at least one of Kafka, HDFS or Kubernetes - you have deployed, configured, upgraded, tuned or supported the platform itself.
• Experience operating self‑managed infrastructure, whether bare metal, datacentre, self‑run VMs or self‑managed Kubernetes.
• Python experience for systems automation, operational tooling, health checks or deployment workflows.
• Exposure to Docker, Kubernetes, Helm and infrastructure‑focused CI/CD.
• A curious, pragmatic mindset and a genuine interest in understanding how complex systems behave under pressure.

Experience with Dremio, Presto, Airflow, Prefect, Ansible, Puppet, Terraform or cloud platforms would be beneficial, but it is the operational mindset and underlying Linux/infrastructure depth that matter most.

This is a standout opportunity for an engineer who wants to move beyond managed services, get close to the underlying technology and build a career operating high‑scale, business‑critical systems.