Head - SRE

Skillz Inc.; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 5,000,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401K matching

Equity incentives

Pre-tax benefits

Medical coverage

Job summary

Skillz Inc. is seeking a hands-on engineering leader to head Infrastructure and Security, ensuring scalable platforms and robust security controls.

The role spans Bengaluru and other time zones, driving reliability, cost efficiency, and developer productivity while mentoring teams across Go, Python, and Java stacks. You will partner with Legal, Finance, and product engineering to align architecture with SOX and PCI DSS requirements, owning the CI/CD and deployment pipelines and shaping the

Qualifications

• 14+ years of infrastructure engineering experience with public cloud at scale.
• 5+ years running Kubernetes workloads in production (EKS preferred).
• Proven track record building or overhauling observability stacks for large-scale distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD frameworks (ArgoCD, GitHub Actions, or equivalent).
• Track record leading infra reliability initiatives with measurable, quantified outcomes.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, with the ability to effectively engage and influence senior leadership stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow the DevOps and SRE functions across Las Vegas and Bengaluru, building self-sustaining pods with clear on-call ownership.
• Own SLAs and incident response end-to-end, driving MTTR improvements and serving as escalation owner for P0/P1 events.
• Partner with product engineering on system design, reviewing architectures for scalability, reliability, and security, and speeding delivery.
• Hold Infra Opex budget and identify cloud spend reductions targeting substantial annualized savings.
• Own the CI/CD platform and deployment tooling to measurably improve mean time to deploy for product teams.
• Partner with Legal and Finance on SOX and PCI DSS obligations, translating regulatory requirements into controls.
• Provide day-to-day mentorship to engineers and foster a blameless, continuous-improvement culture.

Skills

AWS/EKS

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Observability

Cost optimization

Security/compliance

Leadership

Go/Python/Java

Tools

ArgoCD

GitHub Actions

Datadog

Prometheus

Jaeger

X-Ray

Job description

If you want to build, develop, and see your impact, join Skillz and level up your Career!

Skillz, the first publicly‑traded mobile eSports platform that hosts billions of casual mobile gaming tournaments for millions of players worldwide, is revolutionizing the gaming industry. By fostering social competition within games, the Skillz platform helps developers build multi‑million dollar franchises by enabling real‑money activity in their games and providing operational support while connecting players through fair, enjoyable, and meaningful competition.

At Skillz, we understand the thrill of achievement and the satisfaction of overcoming challenges. Want to join a team made up of alums from Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Tesla, Twitter (X), Roblox, Zynga, Samsung, Lyft, EA, Riot, Nexon, Gameskraft, PlayStation, Unity, Scopely, Tinder, Intel, Deloitte, EY, Twitch, DraftKings, Wynn Resorts and more? Learn more to see if Skillz is the right fit for your next career move!

Why Skillz

• Culture of Impact: Join a united team of builders, creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs driven by the desire to win. At Skillz, we create value, obsess over our product, and make a difference in the world.
• Comprehensive Benefits: Enjoy peace of mind with our comprehensive benefits package, which includes 100% coverage for medical, dental, and vision expenses for both you and your dependents. Additionally, take advantage of our 401K matching, equity incentives, pre‑tax benefit options, and more.
• Wellness Support: Enhance your well‑being with our array of wellness initiatives, including meditation and mental health resources, physical fitness coaching and classes, family planning assistance, health and parenting guidance, virtual therapy sessions, and more.
• Time off: We offer competitive paid time off (PTO) & company holidays to help you recharge and pursue your passions.
• Las Vegas Headquarters: Skillz strongly believes in a five‑day a week, collaborative office environment at our 36,000+ square foot headquarters. Enjoy free breakfast and catered lunches, snacks, a full‑size gym with showers, commuter benefits, insurance, team bonding events and many more.
• Recognized Success: Skillz has earned recognition as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, CNBC’s Disruptor 50, San Francisco Business Times’ Best Places to Work, Forbes’ Next Billion‑Dollar Startups, and the #1 fastest‑growing company in America on the Inc. 5000 list, and many more.
• Development Opportunities: We hold our employees to high standards while providing them with professional growth opportunities. We operate like a startup, and encourage all of our employees to collaborate and voice feedback about our product and ways we can improve as a business. We believe in never settling, and that also pertains to your growth.

About the Role

We are hiring a hands‑on engineering leader to lead the Infrastructure and Security domain. This role is critical in ensuring our infrastructure can scale with and support product development needs across the company.

Responsibilities

• Team leadership across time zones: Lead and grow the DevOps and SRE functions across Las Vegas and Bengaluru. Build self‑sustaining pods with clear on‑call ownership and no single points of failure.
• Platform reliability: Own SLAs and incident response end‑to‑end. Drive mean‑time‑to‑detect and mean‑time‑to‑resolve down. Serve as the escalation owner for P0/P1 events.
• Infrastructure architecture reviews: Partner with product engineering teams on system design and architecture decisions. Review proposed architectures for scalability, reliability, and security implications before implementation. Establish a lightweight review process that accelerates rather than gates product delivery.
• Infrastructure cost ownership: Hold the Infra Opex budget. Identify and execute cloud spend reductions (EBS cleanup, right‑sizing, reserved capacity, migration initiatives) targeting $250k+ in annualised savings based on the ROI.
• Developer productivity: Own the CI/CD platform, dev environment tooling, and deployment pipeline reliability. Measurably improve the mean time to deploy for product engineering teams.
• Security and compliance liaison: Partner with Legal and Finance on SOX and PCI DSS obligations. Translate regulatory requirements into infrastructure and application security controls.
• Technical mentorship: Provide day‑to‑day guidance to engineers. Create a culture of operational rigour, blameless post‑mortems, and continuous improvement.

Technical Skills

• Deep AWS expertise — EKS, EC2, VPC, IAM, cost tooling (Cost Explorer, Savings Plans)
• Observability stack ownership — Datadog, Prometheus, distributed tracing (Jaeger/X‑Ray), log aggregation
• Security and compliance fluency — PCI DSS, SOX controls, application security architecture
• Leadership across global teams — asynchronous communication, on‑call design, hiring across time zones
• Demonstrated cost optimisation track record with measurable cloud spend outcomes
• Clear communication with the executive and cross‑functional stakeholders

Qualifications

• 14+ years of infrastructure engineering experience with public cloud at scale
• 5+ years running Kubernetes workloads in production (EKS preferred)
• Proven track record in building or overhauling observability stacks for large‑scale distributed systems
• Hands‑on experience with CI/CD frameworks (ArgoCD, GitHub Actions, or equivalent)
• Track record leading infra reliability initiatives with measurable, quantified outcomes
• Comfortable debugging complex distributed systems and reading application code in Go, Python, or Java
• Prior budget ownership or Opex accountability preferred
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, with the ability to effectively engage and influence senior leadership stakeholders

Nice to Have

• Gaming or fintech experience (real‑money, regulated environment preferred)
• Experience working with geographically distributed engineering teams
• Experience building 0→1 teams or standing up functions from scratch

Join Skillz and Let’s Redefine the Boundaries of Gaming!

Together, we’ll create a world where skill, passion, and innovation thrive. We look forward to having you on board!

Equal Opportunity Employer

Skillz embraces diversity and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As part of our commitment to diversifying our workforce, we do not discriminate on the basis of age, race, sex, gender, gender identity, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, citizenship, veteran status, or disability status, and we operate in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.