Principal Site Reliability Engineer

Devopsroles; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Akamai is seeking a Principal Site Reliability Engineer to lead the SEQ team responsible for enabling new hardware, provisioning, firmware upgrades, and reliable server behavior across datacenters. You will shape strategy for x64, ARM, accelerators, and inference hardware, and drive scalable bare-metal provisioning and observability initiatives.

You will mentor engineers, review designs, and collaborate across vendors to ensure production readiness and robust incident response in a global cloud

Qualifications

• Linux and server-platform expertise including boot, storage, networking, hardware diagnostics, and BIOS/UEFI workflows.
• Provisioning and automation background for bare-metal provisioning and scalable infrastructure.
• Software and CI/CD engineering skills including Python and Bash, with automation, APIs, and deployment pipelines.
• Ability to identify whether hardware-test failures stem from firmware, BIOS/UEFI, device firmware, kernel/driver, or test environment.
• Reliability and operations experience with observability, metrics, and incident analysis.
• Knowledge of x86 and ARM platforms, accelerators, and inference infrastructure including drivers and runtimes.
• Hands-on experience with Linux virtualization technologies (KVM, QEMU, libvirt).
• Understanding nested virtualization, CPU virtualization extensions, VM networking and storage, and Linux troubleshooting of virtualized environments.

Responsibilities

• Shaping compute-platform strategy and qualification: define direction for hardware across firmware, OS, runtime, reliability.
• Leading provisioning and CI/CD improvements: design reproducible bare-metal provisioning, imaging, and delivery pipelines.
• Driving reliability and observability: enhance telemetry, diagnostics, safe rollout and recovery safeguards.
• Providing incident expertise: investigate HW/SW incidents, identify root causes, guide decisions, and drive fixes.
• Acting as a senior technical force multiplier: review designs, mentor engineers, set standards, resolve multi-domain issues.

Skills

Linux

CI/CD

Python

Bash

KVM

QEMU

Libvirt

Observability

Automation

Networking

Tools

KVM

QEMU

Libvirt

Job description

Are you passionate about enabling next-generation server hardware and Linux platforms while building reliable, high-performance infrastructure for a global cloud platform?

Are you excited about solving complex server reliability challenges and delivering hardware, firmware, and Linux solutions for Akamai's global cloud infrastructure?

Join our highly skilled Site Reliability Engineering team

Our HIVE Server Enablement & Qualification (SEQ) team designs, develops, and manages applications and infrastructure supporting Akamai's Compute products and services. HIVE is responsible for supplying our fleet with hardware, the host and guest Linux platforms. We make life better for billions of people, billions of times a day.

Partner with the best!

As a Principal Site Reliability Engineer, you will be at the forefront of Akamai Cloud hypervisor host technologies. SEQ works to enable new hardware via our provisioning service, provides seamless firmware upgrade models, and works with other HIVE teams. Together, we are providing cohesive and performant solutions to our internal infrastructure customers and operators. We ensure reliable server behavior cross all our datacenters.

As a Principal Site Reliability Engineer, you will be responsible for:

• Shaping compute-platform strategy and qualification: define direction and criteria for x64, ARM, accelerator, and inference hardware across firmware, OS, runtime, reliability.


• Leading provisioning and CI/CD improvements: designing reproducible, safe, and scalable bare-metal provisioning, imaging configuration, and infrastructure delivery pipelines.


• Driving reliability and observability: addressing systemic failures, enhance telemetry and diagnostics, and establishing safe rollout and recovery safeguards for production.


• Providing incident expertise: investigate complex HW/SW incidents, identify root causes, guide decision-making, and convert findings into engineering fixes.


• Acting as a senior technical force multiplier: reviewing designs, mentoring engineers, establishing standards, and resolving multi-domain issues across teams and vendors.

Do what you love

To be successful in this role you will:

• Have a Linux and server-platform expertise: knowledge of Linux systems, boot processes, storage, networking, hardware diagnostics, firmware, BIOS/UEFI, BMCs, server lifecycles.


• Have a provisioning & automation background: experience designing and operating bare-metal provisioning, configuration management, and scalable infrastructure automation.


• Demonstrate software & CI/CD engineering skills:
  fluency in Python and BASH, with experience building automation, APIs, deployment pipelines, and debugging multi-layer failures.


• Possess skills identifying whether hardware-test failures originate from firmware, BIOS/UEFI configuration, device firmware, kernel/driver behavior, or the physical test environment


• Possess a Reliability & operations experience:
  expertise in observability, metrics, capacity analysis, incident root-cause investigation, and production readiness.


• Display practical knowledge of x86 and ARM platforms, accelerators, and inference infrastructure, including drivers, runtimes, and compatibility,


• Have hands-on experience with Linux virtualization technologies, including KVM, QEMU and libvirt.


• Have understanding of nested virtualization, CPU virtualization extensions, VM networking and storage, and Linux-level troubleshooting of virtualized environments.

About us

At Akamai, we make life better for billions of people, trillions of times a day.
Whether you're streaming live events, scrolling social media, watching your favorite series, or managing your savings, we're the engine behind the scenes. We provide the world's most distributed platform from Cloud to Edge to help the giants of the digital world work faster and stay more secure, making the internet a better experience for everyone.
Our focus is simple:
Cloud and Edge: Running apps closer to users for instant performance.
Security: Neutralizing threats before they ever reach your data.
Content Delivery: Scaling the world's biggest moments without a glitch.
AI: Enabling our customers to build, secure, and scale AI apps on the world's most distributed cloud platform.
At Akamai, we don't just support the internet; we power and protect it, because behind every great digital experience is a massive hidden challenge. And we're the ones who solve it. When millions of people hit play or pay, Akamai ensures it just works.

Benefits at Akamai:

We support your health, well-being, finances, and life beyond work. See our benefits.

FlexBase adapts to your job's needs

Akamai's FlexBase program is yet another way we show our commitment to providing employees with an exceptional workplace experience. It's not about telling employees where to work; it's about supporting employees to do their best work.
We trust our incredible employees to work in ways that suit them best: at home, in an office, or a combination of both.

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