Senior Staff Engineer - SRE - Incident Prevention / Post Incident Correction of Errors

Geico; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

GEICO is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer - SRE focused on Incident Prevention and Post Incident Correction of Errors. You will craft automation, self-service COE tooling, and data pipelines to scale corrective workflows across GEICO’s distributed platforms.

You will lead GEICO-wide COE sessions for high-severity incidents and drive root-cause learning and prevention across teams. You will mentor engineers in identifying true root causes, producing concise, high-quality COEs, and shaping

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, preferably in platform/reliability engineering.
• 8+ years in architecture, design, system reliability and production leadership.
• 6+ years with open-source frameworks, modern engineering practices or platform technologies.
• 4+ years with Azure, AWS, GCP or other cloud providers.
• Strong ability to lead technical design decisions in complex distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop and operate automation, self-service tools, dashboards, and data pipelines that automate COE workflows and scale operations.
• Lead and moderate weekly GEICO-wide COE sessions for high-severity incidents and ensure proper ownership.
• Provide technical leadership in system design, architecture, and hands-on COE tooling improvements.
• Coach engineering teams to identify root causes, craft clear COEs, and drive learning actions from incidents.
• Drive end-to-end root cause analysis across distributed systems using logs, metrics, traces and observability data.
• Identify gaps in monitoring, alerts, runbooks, testing, or deployment controls and close them with improvements.
• Collaborate with application, platform, SRE and operations teams to improve technology strategy and roadmaps.

Skills

Go

Java

Python

C#

Kubernetes

Serverless (KNative)

Azure

AWS

SQL

NoSQL

Data pipelines

Observability

OpenTelemetry

Grafana

Datadog

Splunk

PagerDuty

GitHub Copilot

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent education or work experience

Tools

Kubernetes

KNative

Azure

AWS

GCP

OpenTelemetry

Grafana

Datadog

Splunk

Azure Monitor

PagerDuty

Claude Code

Cursor

GitHub Copilot

Job description

Why Join GEICO?At GEICO, we offer a rewarding career where your ambitions are met with endless possibilities.Every day we honor our iconic brand by offering quality coverage to millions of customers and being there when they need us most. We thrive on relentless innovation to exceed our customers' expectations while making a real impact on local communities nationwide.Founded in 1936, GEICO is a member of the Berkshire Hathaway family of companies and one of the largest auto insurers in the United States. When you join our company, we want you to feel valued, supported, and proud to work here. That's why we offer the GEICO Pledge: Great Company, Great Culture, Great Rewards, and Great Careers.Senior Staff Engineer - SRE - Incident Prevention / Post Incident Correction of ErrorsPosition SummaryCorrection or Error’s / Post Incident Review is at the core of GEICO’s culture for improving the reliability and availability of our applications. We are rethinking how we do CoEs at scale and the tooling we need to enable GEICO’s engineering teams to learn from the incidents and identify and eliminate patterns leading to them.GEICO is seeking an experienced SRE Software Engineer with a passion for building high-performance, low-maintenance, zero-downtime complex distributed platforms and applications. You will help drive our transformation to a tech organization with engineering excellence and site reliability as its mission, while co-creating a culture of psychological safety and continuous improvement.This role focuses on improving the Correction of Error (COE) tooling and process across GEICO. It is a hands-on technical leadership role focused on better COEs, stronger root cause analysis, fewer repeat incidents, and building the tools and automation that help all GEICO engineering teams learn from incidents and act on that learning.Position DescriptionSuccess in this role requires strong technical depth and equally strong process leadership. The right candidate can go deep on incident analysis, system behavior, and architecture, while also improving how teams run COEs, learn from incidents, and turn those lessons into engineering improvements.Why This Role Is DifferentYou are shaping how GEICO learns from incidents and turns that learning into better engineering practices.Your work directly impacts root cause quality, repeat incidents, availability, MTTR, and operational confidence.This role blends deep technical understanding, hands on execution and ability to build SW with real time incident leadership, platform and processPosition ResponsibilitiesAs a Senior Staff Engineer, you will:Design, develop and operate automation, self-service tools, dashboards, and data pipelines that automate and scale COE workflows and reduce manual tracking and follow-ups.Run and moderate weekly GEICO-wide COE presentation sessions for qualified high-severity incidents, ensuring the right owners are prepared to present.Lead and improve the COE process across the engineering organization.Provide technical leadership in system design, architecture, and hands-on engineering for COE improvements, automation, and incident tooling.Coach application engineering teams so they can identify the true root cause, explain incidents clearly, and produce clear, complete, high-quality COEs.Provide technical leadership for root cause analysis across distributed systems using logs, metrics, traces, and observability data.Identify gaps exposed by incidents, such as missing alerts, weak monitoring, incomplete runbooks, poor testing, or bypassed deployment controls.Look across incidents to find repeat patterns, connect lessons across COEs, and share insights that improve prevention and reliability.Partner with application engineering teams, platform teams, SRE, and operational stakeholders to drive accountability and continuous improvement, by driving improvements in their technology strategy and roadmaps.We have adopted “You Build it You Run it strategy.All our senior technologists take an active role in leading and managing high-severity incidents requiring strong technical judgment, clear communication, and calm execution under pressure.All our engineers have on-call responsibilities as part of a 24x7 rotation supporting incident response and production support for mission-critical platforms and processes they build and operate.QualificationsHands on proficiency in multiple languages, including Go, Java, Python, C# for building production-grade full stack applications on Kubernetes and serverless technologies (KNative) in Azure and AWS.Experience with SQL and NoSQL technologiesExperience with building and using data pipelines analytics, and dashboards for operational metrics, trends, and KPIs using technologies such as Spark, Trino, Grafana, Superset, PowerBIExperience with OpenTelemetry and observability platforms such as Grafana, Datadog, Splunk, Azure Monitor.Experience with incident management platforms such as PagerDuty.Proficiency with AI assisted development processes and tools such as Claude Code, Cursor and GitHub Copilot.Experience improving incident, post incident review, or reliability processes at scale through automation, data, and cross-team influence.Deep incident forensics and root cause analysis skills, with the ability to raise COE quality through clear action items and follow-through across teams.Strong understanding of observability, reliability engineering, incident management, and post-incident improvement practices.Experience supporting incident response and high-severity production incidents in complex environments.Strong software engineering fundamentals and system design skills, with experience building reliable production systems at scale.Ability to lead technical design and architecture decisions in complex distributed systems.Strong communication skills and the ability to coach engineering teams and present findings clearly to leadership.Experience10+ years of professional software engineering experience, preferably in platform engineering, reliability engineering, backend engineering, distributed systems, or operational tooling.8+ years of experience with architecture, design, system reliability, scalability, and technical leadership for production systems.6+ years of experience with open-source frameworks, modern engineering practices, or platform technologies.4+ years of experience with Azure, AWS, GCP, or another cloud service provider, or equivalent experience in complex hybrid environments.Demonstrated ownership of mission-critical systems operating in 24x7 production environments.EducationBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent education or work experience.Additional Job RequirementsAbility to influence engineering outcomes across teams in complex organizations.Must be able to communicate in a clear, concise, professional oral and written manner with customers, clients, co-workers, leadership, and other employees of the organization.Must be able to perform effectively under pressure and in stressful situations, including during production support and high-severity incident response.Must be able to participate in a 24x7 on-call rotation for incident response and production support of mission-critical platforms.Annual Salary$110,000.00 - $260,000.00The above annual salary range is a general guideline. Multiple factors are taken into consideration to arrive at the final hourly rate/ annual salary to be offered to the selected candidate. Factors include, but are not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the role, the selected candidate’s work experience, education and training, the work location as well as market and business considerations.At this time, GEICO will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization for this position.The GEICO Pledge:Great Company: Protecting customers through life’s twists and turns with innovation and integrity.Great Careers: Personalized development programs, mentorship, and certification assistance.Great Culture: Inclusive and collaborative culture rooted in shared success.Great Rewards: Competitive pay, benefits, and flexibility to support your well-being and future.The equal employment opportunity policy of the GEICO Companies provides for a fair and equal employment opportunity for all associates and job applicants regardless of race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, age, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, familial status, disability or genetic information, in compliance with applicable federal, state and local law. GEICO hires and promotes individuals solely on the basis of their qualifications for the job to be filled.GEICO reasonably accommodates qualified individuals with disabilities to enable them to receive equal employment opportunity and/or perform the essential functions of the job, unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship to the Company. This applies to all applicants and associates. GEICO also provides a work environment in which each associate is able to be productive and work to the best of their ability. We do not condone or tolerate an atmosphere of intimidation or harassment. We expect and require the cooperation of all associates in maintaining an atmosphere free from discrimination and harassment with mutual respect by and for all associates and applicants.