Principal Site Reliability Engineer

iSpot.tv; Bellevue (WA); Hybrid; USD 163,620 - 212,710; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

Flexible work hours

Comprehensive benefits package

Job summary

A leading Seattle start-up is looking for a Lead Site Reliability Engineer. You will drive the reliability and performance of key production systems while enhancing the developer experience. This role involves architecting cloud infrastructure in AWS, optimizing data platforms like Apache Spark, and collaborating closely with development teams. The ideal candidate possesses over 10 years of experience in SRE or cloud architecture and is proficient in AWS and Kubernetes. A hybrid work model is offered.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant experience in SRE or cloud architecture.
• Strong expertise in AWS services including EKS, RDS, and S3.
• 5+ years of experience with Kubernetes and containerization.

Responsibilities

• Drive the reliability and performance of production systems.
• Lead incident management and post-mortems for system resilience.
• Architect and maintain scalable cloud infrastructure.

Skills

AWS expertise

Kubernetes

CI/CD concepts

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Apache Spark optimization

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Terraform

CircleCI

Splunk

DataDog

Job description

Immigration / Work Authorization Notice: At this time, iSpot does not provide visa sponsorship or immigration support for this role. Applicants must already be authorized to work in the United States on a full‑time, permanent basis without the need for current or future sponsorship.

iSpot competes for the best talent. Our compensation packages consist of salary and equity in one of Seattle’s hottest start‑ups, as well as other standard benefits. Most importantly, we provide a really interesting working experience and the chance to contribute to the success of something great.

What You’ll Be Part Of:

iSpot.tv is changing how brands, agencies, and networks measure and assess the impact of TV advertising. We deal with BIG data, operating mainly in AWS with multiple Kubernetes clusters and thousands of servers. We are looking for an experienced SRE leader with the skills and passion to make a significant impact on our ecosystem. You will have a wide array of projects to tackle, with ample opportunities for growth.

You will be a key member of our SRE leadership team, focused on empowering developers to build, test, and deploy applications faster and more efficiently. You will both lead the team and remain hands‑on in designing, building, and maintaining the tools, platforms, and processes that improve our engineering teams’ productivity and streamline the software development lifecycle. Your work will directly impact developer happiness and the speed at which we can deliver innovative features to our customers.

Responsibilities:

We are seeking a seasoned and strategic Lead/Principal Site Reliability Engineer to drive the reliability, scalability, and performance of our core production systems while significantly enhancing the internal developer experience. This role sits at the intersection of operations and development, requiring deep technical expertise, strong leadership, and a passion for optimizing the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC).

• System Reliability and Operations (SRE Focus)
• Platform Design and Management: Architect, build, and maintain scalable, highly available, and reliable cloud infrastructure in AWS leveraging modern container orchestration technologies.
• Data Pipeline Reliability: Serve as the reliability and cost optimization expert for high‑volume, data‑intensive workloads. Focus on optimizing and ensuring the stability of distributed data processing engines, specifically Apache Spark and related ecosystems (e.g., EMR, Databricks, Glue).
• Observability and Monitoring: Establish comprehensive observability practices by defining SLIs/SLOs, implementing advanced monitoring, alerting, and logging solutions to quickly identify and resolve system anomalies.
• Automation: Drive automation across all operational aspects, including infrastructure provisioning (Terraform), scaling, deployment, and incident response, minimizing toil and manual effort.
• Incident Management: Lead and participate in the incident response lifecycle, performing thorough post‑mortems to derive actionable insights and implement preventative measures to improve system resilience.
• AIOps: Define and champion the strategic roadmap for AI/ML integration within SRE, establishing organizational best practices for AIOps, automated incident remediation, toil reduction via LLMs, and automated root cause analysis, and govern LLM‑driven tooling to enhance system observability and resilience.
• Developer Experience and Productivity (DevEx Focus)
• Platform Strategy: Design, implement, and champion self‑service tools, internal developer portals, and services that empower engineering teams to manage their infrastructure and deployments independently and efficiently.
• AI Developer Tools: Lead the standardization of AI developer assistants by architecting and maintaining global “steering files” and context‑configuration standards, ensuring AI‑generated code aligns with our specific patterns, security protocols, and architectural guardrails.
• CI/CD Optimization: Own and continuously improve the CI/CD pipelines, reducing build times, streamlining deployment workflows, and integrating best practices for testing, security (Shift Left), and code quality. Maintain and improve our container orchestration and deployment tools, leveraging Kubernetes, Helm, and ArgoCD to create seamless developer workflows.
• KPIs: Develop, implement, and maintain a set of key performance indicators to measure and improve the developer experience across all of Engineering.
• Mentorship and Documentation: Guide and mentor senior engineers, promote SRE/DevEx principles, develop clear, comprehensive documentation and tutorials to ensure seamless adoption of new tools and platforms.
• Cost and Efficiency: Strategically identify and implement opportunities for cloud cost optimization and resource efficiency without compromising reliability or performance.

Qualifications and Education Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of relevant experience in software engineering, cloud architecture, and/or Site Reliability Engineering, with at least 3 years in a leadership or lead contributor role.
• Deep expertise of AWS, including EKS, ECR, RDS, SQS/SNS, VPC, MWAA and S3.
• Strong proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation).
• Specialized experience in optimizing large‑scale data platforms, specifically with Apache Spark. Proven ability to profile, troubleshoot, and tune Spark jobs for performance, cost, and reliability.
• 5+ years of experience with Kubernetes and containerization in general, including associated tools (kubectl, Helm, ArgoCD).
• Strong knowledge of AWS cost optimization.
• TCP/IP networking, including routing and AWS security groups.
• Excellent knowledge of CI/CD concepts and experience developing associated pipelines in CircleCI.
• Experience with OTel and monitoring tools such as Splunk or DataDog. Experience with native AI observability tools is a plus.
• Experience with evaluating and rolling out GenAI tools for improving developer efficiency.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills, with proven experience driving technical initiatives across multiple teams.
• Experience with researching and selecting new/modern developer toolsets and assisting teams in adopting them, including vendor assessments, security assessments, and procurement process.
• Experience in Ad‑Tech or “BIG Data” processing organization is highly preferred.

Target cash compensation range: $163,620 - $212,710 USD Annually.

We are committed to providing a competitive, market‑informed compensation package. The cash compensation above includes base salary, variable commission for employees in eligible roles, and annual bonus targets for eligible roles. In addition to cash compensation, all full‑time iSpotters are eligible to participate in iSpot’s equity plan to receive stock options. Non‑exempt roles will also be eligible for (pre‑approved) overtime pay. Individual compensation packages are influenced by factors unique to each candidate, including their skills, experience, qualifications and other job‑related reasons.

Hybrid & Flexible Workplace Policy

iSpot supports a hybrid and flexible workplace. Depending on location and work responsibilities, employees may be designated as full‑time or part‑time office‑based or a fully remote employee. Those local or living in surrounding areas to one of our offices (Bellevue, WA or New York, NY) will work a hybrid schedule, coming into their local office 1‑3 days a week. If the role is not office‑based and located further away, employees will work a fully remote schedule. Flexibility is balanced with consistency to support high performance.

iSpot is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or recruiting process, please contact our HR team.

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