Principal Site Reliability Engineer

Hirebridge; Denver, Northern (CO, KY); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Vertafore seeks a Principal Site Reliability Engineer to own enterprise-wide reliability, scalability, and performance of critical production services. You will drive architectural standards and operate across AWS, hybrid data centers, and customer-hosted environments.

This role requires 12–15+ years in cloud operations/SRE, with expertise in C#/Java/Python, AWS, Kubernetes, and IaC. You will lead an engineering-first culture, guide observability, and define error budgets across multiple lines

Qualifications

• 12 to 15+ years hands-on Cloud Operations, SRE, or reliability-focused engineering.
• Demonstrated ability to operate at a Principal/Architect scope driving large-scale reliability outcomes.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related field.

Responsibilities

• Define the standards for end-to-end service ownership and ensure availability/performance.
• Lead cross-departmental reliability architecture initiatives across public and private clouds.
• Establish governance models for SLIs/SLOs and error budgets across product lines.
• Lead enterprise incident response and foster a blameless postmortem culture.

Skills

SRE principles

End-to-end ownership

Cloud operations

Incident management

Observability

Blameless culture

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS

Tools

C#/.NET

Java

Python

React

AWS

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Infrastructure as Code

Linux/Windows

Relational databases

Job description

$160,000 - $180,000 / year + Bonus

The insurance industry runs on Vertafore. We equip agencies, MGAs, and carriers with the core digital systems, specialized AI, and data-driven foundation to eliminate distribution drag across the insurance lifecycle, spanning sales, servicing, and back-office operations.

Underpinned by unmatched speed and performance power, we are the trusted backbone that’s taking the insurance industry from friction to flow with Distribution Velocity – speed, performance, and trust - to drive growth at scale.

With over 95% of the top agencies and insurers and 50% of industry compliance transactions running through Vertafore, we lead at the intersection of innovation and trust, giving insurance professionals the confidence to transform and win in the AI era.

Our reach is global, with headquarters in Denver, Colorado, and offices across the U.S., Canada, and India.

We are seeking a Principal Site Reliability Engineer to define the strategic vision and own the enterprise-wide reliability, scalability, and performance of our critical production services. As a foundational pillar of our engineering organization, this role drivesarchitecturalstandards for the full-service lifecycle—from initial design and deployment readiness to proactive production operations. At Vertafore, we view reliability as a core engineering responsibility. You will operate autonomously across AWS, hybrid data centers, and customer-hosted environments, setting the technical direction for how we treat operations as a software engineering challenge. This role is pivotal in transitioning cross-departmental teams toward a highly proactive, engineering-first culture.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership & Reliability Architecture

• Enterprise-Wide Ownership:Define the standards for end-to-end service ownership, holding the organization accountable for availability, performance, and overall operational health.

• Architectural Influence:Lead cross-departmental initiatives to influence system design at the architectural level, driving fault tolerance, strict compliance, and operational sustainability across public and private clouds.

• Advanced Observability Vision:Dictate the enterprise strategy for observability frameworks, ensuring the Four Golden Signals (Latency, Traffic, Errors, and Saturation) provide actionable, predictive insights across all platforms.

Strategic Leadership & Reliability Architecture

• Enterprise-Wide Ownership:Define the standards for end-to-end service ownership, holding the organization accountable for availability, performance, and overall operational health.

• Architectural Influence:Lead cross-departmental initiatives to influence system design at the architectural level, driving fault tolerance, strict compliance, and operational sustainability across public and private clouds.

• Advanced Observability Vision:Dictate the enterprise strategy for observability frameworks, ensuring the Four Golden Signals (Latency, Traffic, Errors, and Saturation) provide actionable, predictive insights across all platforms.

Data-Driven Reliability Governance

• SLO & Error Budget Authority:Establish the governance models for defining and managing SLIs and SLOs across multiple product lines.

• Delivery Alignment:Champion Error Budgets as the ultimate technical arbiter at theexecutive level, balancing feature velocity with the absolute requirement for platform stability.

Incident Management & Cultural Transformation

• Enterprise Incident Command:Lead incident response for the most critical, high-severity events.

• Blameless Culture Champion:Foster a "Win Together" environment by championing a Blameless Postmortem culture globally, ensuring root cause analyses focus strictly on systemic and process improvements rather than individual error.

Qualifications & Requirements

• Experience:12 to 15+ years of hands-on Cloud Operations, SRE, or reliability-focused engineering experience, with a proven track record of end-to-end enterprise service ownership.

• Proven Scope:Demonstrated ability to operate at a Principal/Architect scope, driving large-scale reliability outcomes and operational excellence across global organizations.

• Software Engineering:Expert-level software engineering skills in C#, .NET, Java, Python, or React.

• Principles:Deep expertise in scaling core SRE principles (SLIs, SLOs, error budgets) across complex, distributed systems.

• Technical Stack:Mastery of AWS, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure-as-Code, and extensive knowledge of Linux and Windows environments and relational databases.

• Education:Bachelor’s orMaster’s degree in Computer Scienceor a related technical field.

• Commitment:Participation in an executive on-call rotation with flexible hours as required