Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Lead – VP

Cpl; Dublin; On-site; EUR 100,000 - 134,000; Full time

Job summary

Cpl is partnering exclusively with a leading global financial services organisation to recruit a Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Lead at VP level in Dublin. You will stand up the SRE function from scratch, hire and mentor a team, and own reliability as the core mission.

You will drive release readiness, platform stability and risk visibility across the estate, introducing SLOs, SLAs, toil reduction and governance. A rare opportunity to shape a capability within a fast-scaling EMEA hub.

Qualifications

• Experience leading SRE or reliability engineering functions in large, complex enterprise environments.
• Strong grounding across compute, virtualization, storage and networking on‑premises and cloud.
• Familiarity with monitoring/observability tooling, Terraform, Ansible and CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Stand up and lead a brand-new SRE function, building and mentoring a high-performing team across on‑premises and cloud infrastructure.
• Take end-to-end ownership of reliability outcomes—release readiness, platform stability and risk visibility across the estate.
• Introduce modern SRE disciplines: SLAs, SLOs, error budgets and toil reduction baked into design from day one.
• Champion observability, automation and Infrastructure as Code to lift system health and reduce manual effort.
• Act as the connective tissue between Engineering, Operations, Security and Architecture, threading SRE thinking through BAU and release governance.
• Lead on operational resilience and risk, chairing change forums and managing escalations via on‑call rotations.

Skills

SRE leadership

Stakeholder management

Team leadership

Architectural thinking

Strategic planning

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Kubernetes

VMware

Job description

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Lead - VP

Dublin | Financial Services | Permanent

Cpl is partnering exclusively with a leading global financial services organisation to recruit a Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Lead at VP level for their growing Dublin technology hub. This is a newly created role with a genuine build-from-scratch mandate: you'll stand up the SRE function from the ground up, then hire, mentor and lead the team that runs it. If you're an infrastructure leader who wants ownership of reliability as your core mission - not a side-line to operations or engineering - this is a rare opportunity to shape a capability in your own image, right at the centre of a fast-scaling EMEA business.

What you'll be doing

• Stand up and lead a brand-new SRE function, building and mentoring a high-performing team across on-premises and cloud infrastructure
• Take end-to-end ownership of reliability outcomes - release readiness, platform stability and risk visibility across the estate
• Introduce modern SRE disciplines: SLAs, SLOs, error budgets, toil reduction and operational readiness reviews baked into design from day one
• Champion observability, automation and Infrastructure as Code to lift system health and cut manual effort
• Act as the connective tissue between Engineering, Operations, Security and Architecture, threading SRE thinking through BAU and release governance
• Lead on operational resilience and risk - chairing change forums, embedding blameless post-mortems, and picking up escalations via the on-call rota

What you'll bring

• A track record leading SRE or reliability engineering functions in large, complex enterprise environments
• Strong technical grounding across compute, virtualisation, storage and networking - both on-premises and cloud
• Hands-on familiarity with monitoring/observability tooling, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible) and CI/CD & version control
• Experience building or maturing SRE capability at scale, including process, governance and reporting
• Excellent stakeholder skills, credible across engineering, operations and security audiences
• Relevant certifications or equivalent depth across infrastructure stacks (e.g. VMware, Kubernetes, modern datacentre networking)
• Exposure to regulated environments, ideally financial services, with familiarity around DORA, PRA or ECB operational resilience requirements an advantage

What's on offer

• Base salary circa €100,000 - €134,000 commensurate with experience
• Discretionary incentive award plus a competitive benefits package, including pension
• A genuine build-from-scratch leadership mandate, with real influence over how the function is shaped
• A high-visibility seat at the table across Engineering, Security and Architecture in a growing EMEA hub