Site Reliability Engineer

Empower Retirement, LLC; Overland Park (KS); On-site; USD 87,400 - 123,400; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision and life ins."

401(k) with company match

Tuition reimbursement

Paid time off & holidays

Job summary

Empower Retirement, LLC is seeking a Site Reliability Engineer to ensure reliability, scalability, and performance of its financial services platform. You will support production systems serving millions of customers, improve observability, and collaborate with development teams to maintain high availability in a regulated environment.

You will own operational excellence, participate in on-call rotations, drive postmortems, and implement preventive measures while advancing CI/CD and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in CS/IT.
• 0 2–4 years in SRE/DevOps/Systems Eng.
• Experience with AWS services and Kubernetes for production.
• Terraform or CloudFormation for IaC.
• Observability and incident response experience.
• Understanding CI/CD with GitLab CI/Jenkins.
• Networking fundamentals for high availability.
• Familiarity with GitOps and on-call practices.
• Strong problem-solving and eagerness to learn.

Responsibilities

• Own operational excellence for assigned systems and services.
• Participate in on-call rotations and incidents.
• Lead postmortems and root cause analyses; implement preventive measures.
• Establish service level indicators; monitor and alert in Kubernetes (EKS).
• Build and maintain infrastructure as code across AWS environments.
• Manage EKS clusters to support scalable, resilient apps.
• Support releases with scalable, reliable services using GitOps and progressive delivery.
• Maintain and improve CI/CD pipelines and automation to reduce toil.
• Lead capacity planning for performance and reliability.
• Document critical systems and mentor junior SREs.

Skills

On-call incident response

Root-cause analysis

Observability mindset

SRE practices

SLO/SLI knowledge

Networking fundamentals

Shell/Go/Python

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/IT or equivalent

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Docker

Kubernetes (EKS)

GitLab CI

Jenkins

Istio

Linkerd

Datadog

AppDynamics

New Relic

AWS (EKS, EC2, RDS, S3, VPC)

Job description

Our vision for the future is based on the idea that transforming financial lives starts by giving our people the freedom to transform their own. We have a flexible work environment, and fluid career paths. We not only encourage but celebrate internal mobility. We also recognize the importance of purpose, well-being, and work-life balance. Within Empower and our communities, we work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive environment, and our associates dedicate thousands of hours to volunteering for causes that matter most to them. Chart your own path and grow your career while helping more customers achieve financial freedom. Empower Yourself.

***Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time, including CPT/OPT.***

The Site Reliability Engineer will help ensure the reliability, scalability, and performance of Empower’s financial services platform. This person will support production systems that serve millions of customers, improve operational excellence across assigned services, and partner with development teams to maintain high availability, strong observability, and efficient delivery practices in a regulated environment.

What you will do:

• Own operational excellence for assigned systems and services while supporting projects of varying complexity across teams
• Participate in on-call rotations, respond to incidents, troubleshoot complex system and deployment issues, and drive resolution
• Lead postmortem processes, conduct root cause analysis, and implement preventive measures
• Establish service level indicators, build proactive monitoring and alerting, and manage observability for Kubernetes environments, including EKS
• Build, maintain, and optimize infrastructure as code across multiple AWS environments
• Manage and optimize EKS clusters to support the availability, resilience, and scalability of containerized applications in production
• Collaborate with development teams to support releases and implement scalable, resilient, and maintainable services using GitOps and progressive delivery practices
• Maintain and improve CI/CD pipelines and automation tools to reduce toil and improve operational efficiency
• Lead capacity planning and right-sizing efforts to support performance optimization and system reliability
• Document critical systems, runbooks, architecture decisions, and system behaviors, and mentor entry-level SREs on operational best practices

What you will bring:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 2 to 4 years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps, or Systems Engineering
• Experience maintaining high availability and resiliency across AWS infrastructure components, including EKS, EC2, RDS, S3, VPC, and similar services
• Production experience with Kubernetes and containerization technologies such as Docker, including deployment, troubleshooting, and optimization
• Proficiency with infrastructure as code frameworks such as Terraform and CloudFormation
• Experience with observability platforms and the technologies, systems, and networks that affect incident detection and response
• Understanding of CI/CD principles and experience with GitLab CI, Jenkins, or equivalent tools
• Knowledge of networking fundamentals, troubleshooting, and high-availability architecture patterns
• Familiarity with GitOps workflows, incident management, and on-call practices
• Strong problem-solving skills, sound judgment, and a desire to learn

What will set you apart:

• Experience in financial services or other highly regulated industries
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks such as SOC 2 or PCI DSS
• Experience with observability and APM tools such as Datadog, AppDynamics, New Relic, or similar platforms
• Strong programming skills in shell, Go, Python, or similar languages
• Experience supporting Java Spring Boot applications
• Production experience in Kubernetes, especially EKS
• Experience with service mesh technologies such as Istio or Linkerd
• AWS, Kubernetes, or other relevant certifications
• Experience with disaster recovery and business continuity planning
• Background in site reliability engineering practices and SLO/SLI methodologies

This job description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications of the job. The employer has the right to revise this job description at any time. You will be evaluated in part based on your performance of the responsibilities and/or tasks listed in this job description. You may be required to perform other duties that are not included on this job description. The job description is not a contract for employment, and either you or the employer may terminate employment at any time, for any reason.

What we offer you

• Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• Retirement savings – 401(k) plan with generous company matching contributions (up to 6%), financial advisory services, potential company discretionary contribution, and a broad investment lineup
• Tuition reimbursement up to $5,250/year
• Business-casual environment that includes the option to wear jeans
• Generous paid time off upon hire – including a paid time off program plus ten paid company holidays and three floating holidays each calendar year
• Paid volunteer time — 16 hours per calendar year
• Leave of absence programs – including paid parental leave, paid short- and long-term disability, and Family and Medical Leave (FMLA)
• Business Resource Groups (BRGs) – BRGs facilitate inclusion and collaboration across our business internally and throughout the communities where we live, work and play. BRGs are open to all.

Base Salary Range $87,400.00 - $123,400.00 The salary range above shows the typical minimum to maximum base salary range for this position in the location listed. Non-sales positions have the opportunity to participate in a bonus program. Sales positions are eligible for sales incentives, and in some instances a bonus plan, whereby total compensation may far exceed base salary depending on individual performance. Actual compensation offered may vary from posted hiring range based upon geographic location, work experience, education, licensure requirements and/or skill level and will be finalized at the time of offer.

Equal opportunity employer Drug-free workplace

We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity. All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age (40 and over), race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, pregnancy, religion, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable state or local law.

***For remote and hybrid positions you will be required to provide reliable high-speed internet with a wired connection as well as a place in your home to work with limited disruption. You must have reliable connectivity from an internet service provider that is fiber, cable or DSL internet. Other necessary computer equipment, will be provided. You may be required to work in the office if you do not have an adequate home work environment and the required internet connection.***

Job Posting End Date at 12:01 am on: 08-03-2026

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Remote and Hybrid Positions For remote and hybrid positions you will be required to provide reliable high-speed internet with a wired connection as well as a place in your home to work with limited disruption. You must have reliable connectivity from an internet service provider that is fiber, cable or DSL internet. Other necessary computer equipment will be provided. You may be required to work in the office if you do not have an adequate homework environment and the required internet connection.

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