Senior Site Reliability Engineer I

Join Our Talent Community; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 134,000 - 215,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) with employer match

Discretionary paid time off

Parental leave for all parents

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Fitness programs

Emotional and mental wellness support

Learning and development programs

Snacks in offices

Job summary

Axon is seeking a senior platform engineer to set technical direction across a Kubernetes-based infrastructure that supports millions of events. You will drive IaC, standards, and data tooling while partnering with product teams to optimize datastore performance.

The role emphasizes distributed systems, microservices, and cloud platforms with a strong bias toward automation, observability, and scalable design. Hybrid work options in major US offices are available.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering; Master’s degree a plus.
• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience with distributed systems and cloud architectures.
• Familiarity with CI/CD and IaC tooling.

Responsibilities

• Drive agentic coding workflows and IaC practices across the platform.
• Lead long-term architectural decisions and standardization for platform technologies.
• Design and build a Kubernetes-based platform for lifecycle management of core infra.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to guide application design for platform services.
• Build and operate a self-service platform for datastore solutions.
• Partner with application teams to diagnose datastore performance bottlenecks.

Skills

Distributed systems

Kubernetes

Terraform

Pulumi

Cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)

Observability (Grafana/Datadog/New Rel

Kafka

LLM-powered tools

Microservices

Education

Bachelor’s in Computer Science or Engineering

Master’s degree a plus

Tools

Terraform

Pulumi

Kafka

Grafana

Datadog

New Relic

Job description

Join Axon and be a Force for Good.

At Axon, we’re on a mission to Protect Life. We’re explorers, pursuing society’s most critical safety and justice issues with our ecosystem of devices and cloud software. Like our products, we work better together. We connect with candor and care, seeking out diverse perspectives from our customers, communities and each other.

Life at Axon is fast-paced, challenging and meaningful. Here, you’ll take ownership and drive real change. Constantly grow as you work hard for a mission that matters at a company where you matter.

Your Impact

Every body camera upload. Every piece of digital evidence. Every chain of custody log that holds up in court. That’s us.

Axon’s Platform team is the engine behind what hundreds of thousands of officers rely on every day. We’re one of the world’s largest blob storage customers, ingesting tens of petabytes of video and that number keeps climbing. Audio, photographs, sensor streams: if it’s evidence, we move it, store it, and protect it.

We’re not in maintenance mode. We’re in build mode. We’re modernizing from the ground up with Kubernetes native lifecycle management, GitOps driven configuration, and infrastructure as code that actually reflects reality. We run a polyglot datastore environment: relational databases, wide column stores, document stores, caches, and queues and we’re building the self service platform that helps every team at Axon pick the right tool and use it well. Kafka moves the data. Terraform provisions the world. Grafana tells us when something’s wrong before our users do.

You’ll set technical direction across all of it. Not just implementing someone else’s plan, but making the calls: which datastore patterns we standardize on, how we design for scale and failure, where we invest in automation versus buy versus borrow. You’ll partner with teams across Axon who are building on top of our platform, and your architectural fingerprints will be on systems that process evidence for millions of people.

Location - This role is based out of our Atlanta, Seattle, or Boston office and follows a hybrid schedule. We rely on in-person collaboration and ask that team members work onsite Tuesdays through Fridays, with the flexibility to work remotely on Mondays, unless there is an approved workplace accommodation. We believe that connection fuels innovation, and our in-office culture is designed to foster meaningful teamwork, mentorship, and shared success.

What You’ll Do

• Drive agentic coding workflows, infrastructure as code practices, and technical code reviews across the platform
• Lead long term architectural decisions and standardization efforts for Axon’s platform technologies
• Design and build a Kubernetes based platform that automates the lifecycle management of Axon’s core infrastructure
• Collaborate with engineering teams across Axon to guide application design patterns as they relate to platform service consumption
• Build and operate a self service platform that vends datastore solutions with well defined, best practice utilization patterns
• Partner directly with application teams to diagnose and resolve datastore performance bottlenecks and optimization opportunities

What You Bring

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering; Master’s degree a plus
• United States Citizen — able to gain CJIS clearance for full US production access
• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience; background in platform automation tooling or developer experience tooling strongly preferred
• Proven ability to design and operate complex distributed systems at scale
• Experience with agentic AI tooling or building LLM-powered developer tools
• Deep experience with microservice architectures and patterns; experience migrating monoliths to microservices is a plus
• Strong command of cloud hosted services and architectures across Azure, AWS, or GCP
• Hands on experience with observability platforms such as Grafana, Datadog, or New Relic
• Familiarity with a range of relational and NoSQL datastores, with the ability to go deep on at least one (e.g., MySQL, Cassandra, PostgreSQL)
• Experience designing and operating message queue systems such as Kafka
• Proficiency with infrastructure as code tools such as Terraform or Pulumi

Benefits That Benefit You

• Competitive salary and 401(k) with employer match
• Discretionary paid time off
• Paid parental leave for all parents
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Fitness programs
• Emotional and mental wellness support
• Learning and development programs
• Snacks in our offices (yes, really)

Benefits may vary based on employment type and work location.

Axon is a total compensation company, meaning compensation is made up of base pay, bonus, and stock awards. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: level, function, training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, geographic market, and often a combination of all these factors. Our benefits offer an array of options to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life. To see more details on our benefits offerings please visit https://www.axon.com/careers.

Base Pay Range

$134,250—$214,800 USD

Don’t meet every single requirement? That’s ok. At Axon, we Aim Far. We think big with a long-term view because we want to reinvent the world to be a safer, better place. We are also committed to building diverse teams that reflect the communities we serve.

Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they check every box in the job description. If you’re excited about this role and our mission to Protect Life but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification listed here, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Important Notes

The above job description is not intended as, nor should it be construed as, exhaustive of all duties, responsibilities, skills, efforts, or working conditions associated with this job. The job description may change or be supplemented at any time in accordance with business needs and conditions.

Some roles may also require legal eligibility to work in a firearms environment.

We collect personal information from applicants to evaluate candidates for employment. You may request access, deletion, or exercise other CCPA rights at [e-mail] or via our Axon Privacy Web Form. For more information, please see the Your California Privacy Rights section of our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice.

Axon’s mission is to Protect Life and is committed to the well-being and safety of its employees as well as Axon’s impact on the environment. All Axon employees must be aware of and committed to the appropriate environmental, health, and safety regulations, policies, and procedures. Axon employees are empowered to report safety concerns as they arise and activities potentially impacting the environment.

We are an equal opportunity employer that promotes justice, advances equity and values diversity and fosters inclusion. We’re committed to hiring the best talent — regardless of race, creed, color, ancestry, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship status, marital status, disability, gender identity, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances — and empowering all of our employees so they can do their best work. If you have a disability or special need that requires assistance or accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please email [e-mail]. Please note that this email address is for accommodation purposes only. Axon will not respond to inquiries for other purposes.

Phishing alert: Axon will never ask you to pay for any part of the hiring process, including training, equipment, or background checks. We do not make job offers via text message, WhatsApp, or instant messaging platforms without a formal interview process. All legitimate job openings are listed on our official careers page at https://www.axon.com/careers. If you receive a suspicious offer or outreach from an email address that is not @axon.com, or if you are asked for sensitive personal information (bank details, Social Security Number) prematurely, please ignore the message and report it to [e-mail].