Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Formation Bio; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 186,000 - 232,000; Full time

Job summary

Formation Bio seeks a Senior Site Reliability Engineer to build and operate the infrastructure and delivery systems that power our AI-driven pharma platform. You will manage cloud workloads across AWS and other providers, ensure observability, and drive automation for product, data, and ML workloads.

You will partner with Product Engineering, Data Engineering, and Data Science to design scalable infrastructure, apply AI-assisted tooling, and enforce reliability across development to production

Qualifications

• 5+ years in Site Reliability Engineering, infrastructure, or DevOps.
• Production cloud experience with distributed systems and reliability focus.
• Strong diagnostics, incident response, root cause analysis, observability, and automation.
• Experience with AWS and Snowflake; Azure/GCP/Vercel is a plus.
• Hands-on with Docker, GitHub, Kubernetes, Python, Terraform/OpenTofu, and networking.
• Experience with ML/AI workloads and MLOps infrastructure a plus.
• Familiar with COTS/FOSS software management and collaboration with teams.
• Daily fluency with AI tools and LLMs; high validation standards.

Responsibilities

• Own the shared infrastructure and operational platform for engineering workloads.
• Build and operate secure, observable infrastructure for applications, data, ML pipelines.
• Develop core AWS infrastructure and cloud outposts across dev/stage/prod.
• Write and optimize infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and reusable platform patterns.
• Establish SLOs, monitoring, runbooks, incident response, and post-incident reviews.
• Collaborate with Product, Data, and AI teams to align architecture with needs.
• Leverage AI tools to accelerate infra development and automation while validating outputs.
• Participate in on-call rotations and balance automation with necessary manual steps.
• Document requirements, design, and operating procedures; mentor engineers.

Skills

SRE experience

Observability

Incident response

Root cause analysis

Automation

AWS

Snowflake

Azure

GCP

Vercel

Docker

GitHub

Kubernetes

Python

Terraform/OpenTofu

Networking

Terragrunt

MLOps

Model serving

COTS/FOSS management

LLMs

AI tools

Collaboration

Regulated environment

Tools

Docker

GitHub

Kubernetes

Python

Terraform/OpenTofu

OpenTofu

Terragrunt

Job description

About Formation Bio

Formation Bio is a tech and AI driven pharma company differentiated by radically more efficient drug development.

Advancements in AI and drug discovery are creating more candidate drugs than the industry can progress because of the high cost and time of clinical trials. Recognizing that this development bottleneck may ultimately limit the number of new medicines that can reach patients, Formation Bio, founded in 2016 as TrialSpark Inc., has built technology platforms, processes, and capabilities to accelerate all aspects of drug development and clinical trials. Formation Bio partners, acquires, or in-licenses drugs from pharma companies, research organizations, and biotechs to develop programs past clinical proof of concept and beyond, ultimately helping to bring new medicines to patients. The company is backed by investors across pharma and tech, including a16z, Sequoia, Sanofi, Thrive Capital, John Doerr, Spark Capital, SV Angel Growth, and others.

You can read more at the following links:

• Our Vision for AI in Pharma
• Our Current Drug Portfolio
• Our Technology & Platform

At Formation Bio, our values are the driving force behind our mission to revolutionize the pharma industry. Every team and individual at the company shares these same values, and every team and individual plays a key part in our mission to bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently.

About the Position

As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Formation Bio, you will build and operate the infrastructure, delivery systems, and operational practices that allow our engineering organization to ship reliable software quickly and safely. You will work across cloud infrastructure, developer platforms, observability, and production workloads, including product applications, internal tools, data systems, and ML and AI workloads, taking problems from initial diagnosis through implementation and production adoption.

Formation Bio is an AI-native engineering organization. You will use modern AI tools, including agentic coding systems, as part of your daily engineering practice while applying the judgment needed to validate their output and operate reliable production systems. You will partner closely with Product Engineering, Data Engineering, and Data Science to design, build, and develop the infrastructure and operational platform that supports product software, data systems, and ML and AI workloads, with the opportunity to shape how the broader organization builds and operates AI-native systems.

Responsibilities

• Own the infrastructure and operational platform for shared engineering workloads, including compute, runtime environments, orchestration, deployment, observability, access controls, and reliability.
• Build and operate secure, observable, reliable infrastructure for product applications, containerized services, internal tools, data systems, ML pipelines, inference, and agentic software.
• Research, develop, and maintain core aws infrastructure and additional cloud outposts for services across development, staging, and production, including compute, networking, databases, load balancers, and secrets management.
• Create, review, maintain, and optimize infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and reusable platform patterns.
• Establish strong operational practices, including SLOs, monitoring, alerting, runbooks, incident response, advanced diagnostics, root cause analysis, and post-incident follow-through.
• Work with Product engineering, Data Engineering, and Data Science to evaluate, negotiate, and implement architecture and infrastructure for product software, data systems, model training, and inference based on functional requirements
• Use AI tools to accelerate infrastructure development, investigate incidents, improve documentation, build automation, and make operational improvements while validating their output.
• Participate in the support rotation and incident response. Maintain a strong bias for automation, the patience for ClickOps, and the experience to know when each is appropriate.
• Write and review requirements, design documents, and operating procedures. Share knowledge and mentor engineers on infrastructure and SRE fundamentals.

About You

• 5+ years of relevant experience in Site Reliability Engineering, infrastructure, systems, DevOps, or a similar discipline.
• Production experience operating cloud infrastructure and distributed systems, with strong operational and reliability judgment.
• Experience with advanced diagnostics, incident response, root cause analysis, observability, and automation.
• Experience with AWS and Snowflake. Experience with Azure, GCP, and/or Vercel is a plus.
• Working experience with Docker, GitHub, Kubernetes, Python, Terraform or OpenTofu, and virtual networking. Terragrunt is a plus
• Experience supporting production ML or AI workloads, MLOps infrastructure, workflow orchestration, model serving, or a related platform is a plus. Strong SRE and infrastructure fundamentals are the core requirements.
• Experience managing shared COTS and FOSS software applications in addition to our internal software and tools
• Daily fluency with AI tools, including LLMs and agentic coding systems, paired with strong engineering judgment and a high bar for validation.
• Exceptional collaboration and communication skills across engineering, Data Science, Data Engineering, Security, and non-technical partners.
• Experience operating infrastructure in a regulated or validated environment is a plus.

Total Compensation Range: $185,500 - $232,000

Compensation Individual compensation is determined by several factors, including role scope, geographic location, and skills & experience. Your offer will reflect where you fall within the range based on these considerations. In addition to base salary, we offer equity, comprehensive benefits, and generous perks.

Where We Hire Formation Bio is prioritizing hiring in key hubs, primarily the New York City and Boston metro areas, with a hybrid model requiring 3 days per week in office. Applicants from the Research Triangle (NC) and San Francisco Bay Area may also be considered.

Equal Opportunity Formation Bio is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome candidates from all backgrounds. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and related medical conditions), gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.