Senior Engineer Site Reliability - Data Operations

Empower Retirement; Greenwood Village (CO); Hybrid; USD 106,000 - 149,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) plan with company matching

Tuition reimbursement

Casual work environment

Paid time off

Volunteer time

Parental leave

BRGs

Job summary

Empower Retirement is seeking a Senior Site Reliability Engineer - Data Platforms to enhance reliability of cloud-based data platforms and pipelines. You will collaborate with Data Engineering, Cloud, Platform, and Security teams to improve health, incident response, and automation.

Bring 5+ years of AWS production experience, strong SRE background, Python skills, and expertise in observability with Datadog/Splunk. The role requires ownership of production reliability and proactive improvements.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on AWS experience in production environments.
• Strong understanding of SRE principles and production operations.
• Proficient in Python for automation and tooling.
• Proficient in SQL for production troubleshooting and investigation.
• Experience with incident management, root-cause analysis, and preventive actions.
• Hands-on experience with Terraform or IaC for infrastructure changes.
• Experience with Datadog and Splunk for observability.

Responsibilities

• Own and improve reliability, availability, and performance of production data platforms and pipelines.
• Monitor and support pipeline execution, failures, delays, and downstream impact.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues across AWS, data platforms, and supporting services.
• Design observability dashboards and alerting using Datadog and Splunk.
• Lead or participate in incident response, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions.
• Automate operational tasks with Python for health checks and remediation.
• Apply SRE practices including SLOs, capacity planning, resilience, and disaster recovery.
• Use SQL for production investigation and troubleshooting.
• Understand IaC managed infrastructure and collaborate with Cloud/Platform Engineering.

Skills

AWS production experience

SRE/Production Engineering

Python scripting

SQL proficiency

Incident management

Terraform / IaC

Datadog and Splunk

Tools

Snowflake

Terraform

Job description

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them.

Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself.

***Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time, including CPT/OPT.***

The Senior Site Reliability Engineer - Data Platforms will improve the reliability, observability, and operational maturity of cloud-based data platforms and production data pipelines. This SRE-first role focuses on production reliability and operational ownership, with primary data-pipeline development and core infrastructure engineering handled in partnership with the respective engineering teams. You will work closely with Data Engineering, Cloud, Platform, Application, Security, and FinOps teams to improve production health, incident response, automation, observability, resilience, and operational efficiency.

What you will do:

• Own and improve the reliability, availability, performance, and operational health of production data platforms and pipelines.
• Monitor and support pipeline execution, dependencies, failures, delays, recovery, and downstream impact.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues across AWS, data platforms, pipelines, and supporting services.
• Design and improve observability using enterprise platforms such as Datadog and Splunk, including dashboards, alerting, logging, and service-health indicators.
• Improve signal quality, reduce alert noise, and strengthen incident detection and diagnosis.
• Lead or participate in production incident response, service restoration, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions.
• Use Python to automate operational tasks, monitoring, health checks, remediation, and repetitive support activities.
• Apply SRE practices including service-level objectives, incident management, operational readiness, capacity planning, resilience, disaster recovery, and reduction of operational toil.
• Use SQL for production troubleshooting, validation, and investigation.
• Understand and troubleshoot infrastructure managed through Terraform and Infrastructure as Code, partnering with Cloud or Platform Engineering when deeper infrastructure changes are required.
• Identify recurring operational issues and drive sustainable engineering improvements.
• Contribute to performance, capacity, and cost-efficiency improvements across AWS and data-platform services.
• Develop and improve operational runbooks and recovery procedures.
• Participate in the PagerDuty on-call rotation, including occasional weekend coverage.
• Understand how the platform and its pipelines behave in production, recognize emerging reliability risks, diagnose issues quickly, restore service effectively, and implement lasting improvements.
• Use observability and automation to move operations from reactive support toward proactive reliability engineering, reducing recurring incidents and manual operational effort while improving the overall resilience of the data platform.

What you will bring:

• 5+ years of hands-on AWS experience supporting production environments.
• Demonstrated experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Production Engineering, Platform Engineering, or Cloud Reliability Engineering.
• Strong practical understanding and implementation of SRE principles and production operations.
• Experience supporting Amazon Redshift or similar enterprise data platforms in production.
• Experience owning or supporting the reliability and operations of production data pipelines or data-intensive services.
• Hands-on experience with enterprise observability platforms such as Datadog and Splunk.
• Strong Python programming skills for automation and operational tooling.
• Working knowledge of SQL for production investigation and troubleshooting.
• Strong understanding of Terraform and Infrastructure as Code, with the ability to read, review, and troubleshoot existing IaC.
• Experience with incident management, root-cause analysis, and implementing preventive and corrective actions.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills in complex production environments.

What will set you apart:

• Hands-on production experience with Snowflake.
• Experience supporting multiple cloud-based data platforms.
• Experience designing observability for large-scale, distributed, or data-intensive systems.
• Experience with AIOps, intelligent automation, or agentic operations applied to production operations.
• Experience using AI-assisted approaches for incident detection, diagnosis, alert enrichment, runbook execution, operational automation, or guarded remediation.
• Familiarity with AWS-native monitoring services such as Amazon CloudWatch.
• Experience with data-pipeline orchestration, dependency management, failure recovery, and production support.
• Experience improving cloud-resource utilization and cost visibility.
• Experience helping establish or mature SRE practices within an engineering organization.

This job operates in a professional office environment.

This job description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications of the job. The employer has the right to revise this job description at any time. You will be evaluated in part based on your performance of the responsibilities and/or tasks listed in this job description. You may be required to perform other duties that are not included on this job description. The job description is not a contract for employment, and either you or the employer may terminate employment at any time, for any reason, as per terms and conditions of your employment contract.

What we offer you

We offer an array of diverse and inclusive benefits regardless of where you are in your career. We believe that providing our employees with the means to lead healthy balanced lives results in the best possible work performance.

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• Retirement savings - 401(k) plan with generous company matching contributions (up to 6%), financial advisory services, potential company discretionary contribution, and a broad investment lineup
• Tuition reimbursement up to $5,250/year
• Business-casual environment that includes the option to wear jeans
• Generous paid time off upon hire - including a paid time off program plus ten paid company holidays and three floating holidays each calendar year
• Paid volunteer time - 16 hours per calendar year
• Leave of absence programs - including paid parental leave, paid short- and long-term disability, and Family and Medical Leave (FMLA)
• Business Resource Groups (BRGs) - BRGs facilitate inclusion and collaboration across our business internally and throughout the communities where we live, work and play. BRGs are open to all.

Base Salary Range

$105,700.00 - $149,275.00

The salary range above shows the typical minimum to maximum base salary range for this position in the location listed. Non-sales positions have the opportunity to participate in a bonus program. Sales positions are eligible for sales incentives, and in some instances a bonus plan, whereby total compensation may far exceed base salary depending on individual performance. Actual compensation offered may vary from posted hiring range based upon geographic location, work experience, education, licensure requirements and/or skill level and will be finalized at the time of offer.

Equal opportunity employer * Drug-free workplace

We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity. All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age (40 and over), race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, pregnancy, religion, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable state or local law.

***For remote and hybrid positions you will be required to provide reliable high-speed internet with a wired connection as well as a place in your home to work with limited disruption. You must have reliable connectivity from an internet service provider that is fiber, cable or DSL internet. Other necessary computer equipment, will be provided. You may be required to work in the office if you do not have an adequate home work environment and the required internet connection.***