Senior Site Reliability Engineer

HiveWatch; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

HQ on Main Street in El Segundo

401(k) with 4% company match

Flexible paid time off

ClassPass credits

Pet insurance discount

Job summary

HiveWatch is seeking a Senior Site Reliability Engineer to join our Platform Team, where you'll architect and maintain mission-critical edge infrastructure that connects our SaaS platform to customer systems. You’ll ensure performance, reliability, and observability across a distributed environment while mentoring the engineering team.

This role reports to the VP of Engineering and includes on-call rotation, incident response leadership, and automation-driven toil reduction.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience in production.
• 5+ years in SRE, DevOps, or production operations.
• Expertise with AWS and containerized apps.
• Proficiency in Java/Kotlin or Python.
• Experience with monitoring/observability tools.

Responsibilities

• Own reliability of mission-critical systems including monitoring and capacity planning.
• Debug production issues across full stack from infra to app code.
• Participate in on-call rotation for 24/7 coverage.
• Lead root cause analysis and preventive measures.
• Build automation to reduce toil and improve reliability.
• Maintain CI/CD pipelines and observability stack.
• Enhance resiliency and scalability of production environments.
• Maintain on-call procedures and disaster recovery.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship.

Skills

Software engineering

DevOps

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

Python

Java/Kotlin

SQL/DB tuning

Observability

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Terraform

Terragrunt

Docker

Kubernetes

PostgreSQL

GitHub Actions

Job description

About Us

HiveWatch is a tech-forward, inclusive organization fostering the evolution of the physical security industry. We are a diverse team of forward thinkers who empower each other to find creative and collaborative solutions in an industry ripe for modernization. We are passionate about the problems we're solving for our customers and equally passionate about the company we're building.

HiveWatch is here to help security teams pivot from chasing threats to preventing them. We protect organizations, people, and property through the intelligent orchestration of physical security programs. With better communication, more insights, and less "noise", we are modernizing what it means for businesses and their employees to truly feel safe.

• Funding & Growth Momentum: HiveWatch recently closed a $33M Series B, bringing total funding to over $65 million. The company is entering "Phase 2: Scale" with multiple Fortune 500 customers secured. 95% of Americans have interacted with a product, service, or brand protected by HiveWatch.
• Founder with Deep Industry Expertise: Ryan Schonfeld, Founder & CEO, began his career as a police officer and investigator before leading a Global Security and Safety Technology at Fox Group. He founded HiveWatch to disrupt an antiquated physical security industry with AI‑powered tools that free security operators from false alarms to focus on real threats.
• Cutting-Edge AI Technology: Security leaders are under tremendous pressure to modernize their function using AI, and HiveWatch is uniquely positioned to automate 90% of alarm responses for organizations, transforming how enterprise security teams work.
• Culture of Ownership & Impact: This is an environment where you can take genuine ownership, build meaningful relationships, and deliver results quickly. If you want to help build and scale a rapidly expanding organization with a real path to advance your career, this is the place.

Position Overview

HiveWatch is seeking a Senior Site Reliability Engineer to join our Platform Team, where you'll architect and maintain mission‑critical edge infrastructure that connects our SaaS platform to customer systems. You'll ensure exceptional performance, reliability, and observability across our distributed environment while providing technical leadership to our growing engineering team. This role reports directly to our VP of Engineering.

What you'll do

• Own the reliability of mission‑critical systems including production monitoring, alerting, and capacity planning.
• Debug and resolve complex production issues across the full stack, from infrastructure to application code.
• Participate in a regular on‑call rotation to provide 24/7 coverage for critical systems.
• Perform root cause analysis requiring deep code‑level investigation and implement preventive measures.
• Build automation and tooling to reduce operational toil and improve system reliability.
• Maintain CI/CD pipelines, observability infrastructure, and database performance optimization.
• Increase the resiliency, scalability, and maintainability of production environments.
• Maintain on‑call procedures and disaster recovery processes.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to foster engineering excellence and reliability culture.

Our Tech Stack

• Languages: Kotlin, Rust, TypeScript, and Python.
• Deployments: GitHub Actions, Terraform, Terragrunt, and Helm.
• Infrastructure: AWS (Kinesis, Serverless, RDS, EKS), Kubernetes, Docker, Postgres, IoT Edge, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux.

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with strong coding skills in production environments.
• 5+ years of SRE, DevOps, or production operations experience.
• Expertise with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and containerized applications (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, or similar).
• Proficiency in at least one object oriented programming language in our tech stack (Java, Kotlin, Python).
• Hands‑on experience with relational databases and SQL performance optimization.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, DataDog, or equivalent).
• Strong debugging skills across distributed systems and microservices architectures.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Expertise in AWS architecture and services.
• Experience in physical security, IoT, or edge computing environments.
• Expertise with advanced AWS services (Kinesis, Lambda, EKS, RDS).
• Experience with Terraform and Terragrunt specifically.
• Background in high‑availability, multi‑tenant SaaS environments.
• Experience establishing SRE practices and culture from the ground up.
• Track record of leading incident response and post‑mortem processes.
• Experience mentoring and developing junior engineers.
• Knowledge of security best practices and compliance requirements.
• Experience with edge computing and distributed system architectures.
• Previous experience in a startup or high‑growth environment (50–200 employees).
• Experience with our tech stack: Kotlin, Rust, TypeScript, Python.

Additional Information

• Salary range for this position: $170,000 to $190,000 per year.
• Eligible to participate in HiveWatch Equity Incentive Plan.
• Final offer will be at the company's sole discretion and determined by multiple factors, including years and depth of relevant experience and expertise, location, and other business considerations.

Benefits & Culture

At HiveWatch, we're passionate about taking care of our people — and it shows in the benefits we offer. Our team enjoys:

• Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, vision, and life insurance.
• Cutting‑edge work in an emerging field with huge growth potential.
• Competitive compensation packages designed to reward top talent.
• A modern, newly renovated HQ right on Main Street in El Segundo, CA.
• 401(k) with a 4% company match to help you invest in your future.
• Flexible paid time off so you can recharge when you need it.
• Additional benefits include ClassPass credits and a discount on pet insurance.
• A family‑friendly, compassionate culture that values balance and belonging.

We encourage you to challenge the status quo, share your perspective, and leave fear at the (access‑controlled) door.

EEO Statement

HiveWatch is an equal opportunity employer and we are committed to cultivating a work environment that supports, inspires, and respects all individuals. We execute our hiring practices so that they are merit‑based and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, marital status, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, national origin, ancestry, military or veteran status, or other protected characteristic.