Site Reliability Engineer – Data Infrastructure & Distributed Systems - HFT - Sydney

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

Job summary

Westbury Partners is seeking an Site Reliability Engineer to join a high-impact team responsible for large-scale data infrastructure and distributed systems in Sydney. You will operate and evolve self-managed platforms, with emphasis on reliability, automation, and collaboration with researchers and traders.

The role focuses on Linux expertise, Kafka/HDFS/Kubernetes, CI/CD, and infrastructure tooling with Python.

Qualifications

• Hands-on production operations experience with self-managed infrastructure.
• Strong Linux fundamentals including processes, filesystems, networking, memory and disk behaviour.
• Experience operating distributed data platforms, especially Kafka, HDFS or Kubernetes.
• Experience with monitoring, alerting, incident response and production troubleshooting.
• A track record of infrastructure automation and CI/CD.
• Python experience for infrastructure tooling and deployment automation.
• Experience with configuration management or infrastructure-as-code such as Ansible, Puppet or Terraform.
• Curiosity and ownership to understand how complex systems work beneath the surface.

Responsibilities

• Operate and monitor distributed data platforms like Kafka, HDFS and in-house pipelines.
• Build automation and CI/CD solutions for rapid deployment of infra and software.
• Respond to incidents, participate in on-call rotations and implement lasting improvements.
• Diagnose Linux, networking, storage, and infrastructure issues.
• Plan upgrades, migrations, capacity improvements, and technology rollouts.
• Collaborate with traders, researchers and developers to troubleshoot data solutions.
• Develop tooling and automation using Python and configuration-management tech.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and drive improvements to the data platform.

Skills

Linux fundamentals

Kafka

HDFS

Kubernetes

Monitoring

CI/CD

Python

IaC

Ansible

Terraform

Puppet

Communication

SRE mindset

Tools

Kafka

HDFS

Kubernetes

Ansible

Terraform

Puppet

Job description

Site Reliability Engineer – Data Infrastructure & Distributed Systems - HFT - Sydney

Join a high-impact SRE team operating large-scale data infrastructure, distributed systems and self-managed platforms, combining Linux expertise, automation, incident response and engineering to keep critical systems reliable.

What You’ll Do:

Operate and evolve large-scale data infrastructure powering demanding users and workloads. You’ll work across distributed systems, storage, processing platforms and in-house technology, with reliability at the heart of everything you do.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Operate and monitor distributed data platforms, including Kafka, HDFS, Dremio and in-house pipelines.
• Build automation and CI/CD solutions for rapid infrastructure and software deployment.
• Respond to incidents, participate in on-call rotations and engineer lasting improvements that prevent recurring failures.
• Diagnose complex Linux, networking, storage, performance and infrastructure issues.
• Plan and execute upgrades, migrations, capacity improvements and technology rollouts.
• Work directly with traders, researchers and developers to troubleshoot problems and recommend effective data solutions.
• Develop infrastructure tooling and automation using Python and configuration-management technologies.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and introduce improvements to a continuously evolving data platform.
• Collaborate with systems and network engineers and colleagues across international offices.

Why Join Us:

• Own technology at serious scale: Work with multi-petabyte data infrastructure and millions of queries each day.
• Solve real engineering problems: Manage infrastructure where reliability, capacity and failure recovery genuinely matter.
• Build deep technical expertise: Develop hands-on experience with distributed systems, Linux, Kubernetes, Kafka, HDFS and automation.
• Learn from experienced engineers: Join a highly skilled team with structured development and dedicated technical ramp-up.
• Make a visible impact: Your engineering decisions directly influence the reliability and performance of critical data platforms.
• Work with demanding users: Partner directly with technical teams who need fast, practical solutions.

About You:

You’re an engineer who thinks like an SRE: you understand that keeping systems running is only the beginning. You investigate failures, understand their causes and build solutions that make the next incident less likely.

You’ll ideally bring:

• Hands-on production operations experience with self-managed infrastructure.
• Strong Linux fundamentals, including processes, filesystems, networking, memory and disk behaviour.
• Experience operating at least one complex infrastructure platform deeply, particularly Kafka, HDFS or Kubernetes.
• Experience with monitoring, alerting, incident response and production troubleshooting.
• A track record of infrastructure automation and CI/CD.
• Python experience, particularly for infrastructure tooling, deployment automation or operational workflows.
• Experience with configuration management or infrastructure-as-code such as Ansible, Puppet or Terraform.
• An appetite for understanding how complex systems work beneath the surface.
• Strong communication skills and the confidence to work directly with technical users.
• Curiosity, ownership and a willingness to develop breadth across a sophisticated data ecosystem.