Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Applaudostudios; Louisville (KY); Hybrid; USD 124,000 - 207,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

On-site in Louisville

Job summary

Applaudo Studios seeks a Senior Site Reliability Engineer to own reliability, design, and automation across cloud and edge-based restaurant technology. You will manage cloud platforms, Kubernetes edge systems, CI/CD, and networking, collaborating with security and DevOps teams.

The contractor role includes on-site presence in Louisville on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with on-call coverage and a strong focus on automation and reliability improvements.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience in CS/Engineering or related field.
• 6+ years IT infrastructure with 3+ years in site reliability, cloud architecture, or platform engineering.
• Hands-on AWS experience: VPC, EC2, ECS, EKS, Fargate, Lambda, IAM, RDS, S3.
• Microsoft Azure experience.
• Design scalable, secure, highly available cloud architectures (AWS).
• Strong Kubernetes/container orchestration (EKS, AKS) with edge/distributed deployments.
• Terraform for IaC provisioning.
• CI/CD pipelines with GitLab CI/CD.
• Define and operate against SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets.
• Enterprise networking experience, including VLANs and network troubleshooting.
• MDM familiarity.
• Automation and scripting in Python/Bash/Go.
• Build internal tooling and API integrations beyond managed services.
• Cloud security best practices: IAM, network segmentation, encryption, secrets management.
• Incident response leadership and blameless post-incident reviews.
• Linux CLI proficiency; Windows familiarity where endpoints require it.
• Reliability-first mindset across cloud, edge, networking, and device management.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration and technical leadership.

Responsibilities

• Define and own SLOs/SLIs for restaurant technology systems, using error budgets.
• Build and maintain monitoring, alerting, and observability platforms with meaningful signals.
• Lead incident response for restaurant technology systems, including on-call coverage.
• Drive blameless post-incident reviews; perform root cause analysis and implement fixes.
• Reduce MTTD/MTTR through tooling, runbooks, and automation.
• Identify reliability risks across the stack and report system health to leadership.
• Design scalable, secure AWS-centric cloud architectures with Azure knowledge.
• Architect and manage containerized workloads on Kubernetes (EKS/AKS), including edge deployments.
• Design and implement serverless and container solutions (Fargate, others).
• Develop and maintain IaC with Terraform.
• Own architecture across cloud, edge, networking, and device management.
• Build and optimize CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI/CD.

Skills

AWS Cloud

Kubernetes

Terraform

GitLab CI/CD

SRE Principles

Incident Response

Linux

Edge deployments

Python scripting

IAM & security

Education

Bachelor's Degree in CS/Engineering

Equivalent professional experience

Tools

CloudWatch

Prometheus

Grafana

Terraform

Job description

About You

You are a Senior Site Reliability Engineer with strong cloud and reliability engineering fundamentals and the versatility to work across edge infrastructure, enterprise networking, mobile deployments, and operational automation. You will own the reliability, design, implementation, and continuous improvement of the infrastructure behind restaurant technology for a leading global quick-service restaurant brand. That covers the cloud platforms and CI/CD pipelines, the Kubernetes-based edge systems deployed in restaurants, and the networks, MDM platforms, and automation tooling that keep everything running.

You move easily between strategic architecture and hands-on execution, you prefer permanent fixes and automation over repeated manual work, and you work closely with Global Reliability Engineering, DevOps, and security teams.

Note: This role operates under a contractor model. It follows a hybrid schedule with on-site presence on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Louisville, Kentucky. The role includes on-call coverage.

You Bring to Applaudo the Following Competencies

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field is desired, or equivalent professional experience.
• 6+ years of experience in IT infrastructure, including 3+ years focused on site reliability engineering, cloud architecture, or platform engineering.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, including VPC, EC2, ECS, EKS, Fargate, Lambda, IAM, RDS, and S3.
• Working experience with Microsoft Azure.
• Experience designing scalable, secure, and highly available cloud architectures, primarily on AWS.
• Strong expertise in Kubernetes and container orchestration (EKS, AKS), including edge or distributed deployments.
• Solid experience with Terraform for infrastructure provisioning.
• Experience designing and building CI/CD pipelines with GitLab CI/CD.
• Experience defining and operating against SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets.
• Experience with enterprise networking, including switch configuration, VLANs, and network troubleshooting.
• Familiarity with Mobile Device Management (MDM) platforms.
• Strong automation and scripting skills using Python, Bash, Go, or equivalent.
• Proven ability to build internal tooling and API integrations, beyond configuring managed services.
• Knowledge of cloud security best practices, including IAM strategy, network segmentation, encryption, and secrets management.
• Experience leading incident response and blameless post-incident reviews.
• Comfortable working in Linux command-line environments. Windows familiarity is a plus where restaurant endpoints require it.
• A reliability-first mindset, comfortable moving between cloud, edge, networking, and device management.
• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills, with the ability to provide technical leadership and mentorship.

Nice to haves

• Experience designing serverless architectures with AWS Lambda, Fargate, API Gateway, and EventBridge.
• Experience with DevSecOps tooling, including SAST, DAST, container scanning, and IaC scanning.
• Familiarity with security frameworks such as CIS, NIST, ISO 27001, and SOC 2.
• AWS and/or Azure certifications.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools such as CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, or SIEM solutions.
• Background in restaurant, retail, or distributed edge technology environments.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools for scripting, troubleshooting, and documentation.

You Will Be Accountable for the Following Responsibilities

• Define and own SLOs and SLIs for restaurant technology systems, using error budgets to balance reliability with delivery velocity.
• Build and maintain monitoring, alerting, and observability platforms that give meaningful signal rather than noise.
• Lead and take part in incident response for restaurant technology systems, including on-call coverage.
• Lead blameless post-incident reviews, drive root cause analysis, and make sure permanent corrective actions are implemented.
• Reduce mean time to detection (MTTD) and mean time to resolution (MTTR) through better tooling, runbooks, and automation.
• Proactively identify reliability risks across the stack, and track and report system health to engineering leadership.
• Design and implement scalable, secure, and highly available cloud architectures primarily on AWS, with working knowledge of Azure.
• Architect and manage containerized workloads on Kubernetes (EKS, AKS), including edge Kubernetes deployments in restaurant locations.
• Design and implement serverless and container-based solutions using AWS Fargate and other managed services.
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform.
• Own architecture across the full restaurant technology stack, covering cloud, edge, networking, and device management.
• Build and optimize CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI/CD and modern DevOps practices.
• Build internal tools, automations, and middleware integrations that eliminate repetitive operational work.
• Use AI-ass