Site Reliability Engineer

PlayerZero; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

PlayerZero is seeking a Site Reliability Engineer to improve reliability, security, and visibility of production systems. You will operate AWS-based environments, automate tasks, instrument services, and collaborate with SRE and engineering teams to reduce toil and strengthen incident response.

You should be able to investigate complex issues, safely modify production infrastructure, and contribute to secure, scalable deployments across distributed data systems.

Qualifications

• Experience operating production services in an SRE/production engineering role.
• Hands-on AWS production experience across EC2, VPC, IAM, Auto Scaling Groups, and Systems Manager.
• Strong Linux and networking fundamentals.
• Experience with distributed data systems such as Kafka, Pulsar, or Redis/Valkey in production.
• Strong scripting or programming skills for automation and instrumentation.
• Experience with metrics, logs, distributed tracing, and alerting (OpenTelemetry or similar).
• Production experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform), CI/CD, containers, and repeatable deployments.
• Experience responding to production incidents and following through on corrective actions.
• Clear communication and collaborative problem solving across teams.
• Experience supporting compliance programs such as SOC 2 or HIPAA is valuable.

Responsibilities

• Operate production infrastructure and data systems, maintaining reliability and resilience.
• Automate operational tasks and build workflows to reduce manual work.
• Improve monitoring and instrumentation with metrics, logs, tracing, and alerts.
• Troubleshoot incidents across applications, infra, networks, and data systems; implement lasting fixes.
• Make infrastructure changes and deployments safer via IaC, CI/CD, and rollback practices.
• Keep production systems secure and current with patching and vulnerability remediation.
• Plan for capacity, identify bottlenecks, and establish service health indicators.

Skills

SRE experience

AWS experience

Linux fundamentals

Distributed systems

Automation scripting

Monitoring instrumentation

CI/CD

Terraform

Incident response

SOC 2

HIPAA

Communication

Tools

Kafka

Pulsar

Redis

Valkey

Job description

About PlayerZero

Building great software takes more than writing code. It takes teams working together and too often, the information they need is scattered across tools, conversations, and systems.

PlayerZero is an AI platform that connects work across enterprise Support, Engineering, Product, QA, and SRE teams, helping them resolve issues faster, improve software quality, and plan what to build next.

At its core is our Engineering World Model: a living understanding of a company’s software, how it runs, and the people and decisions behind it. By connecting codebases, tickets, production telemetry, and the conversations that shape the work, our model links what software is intended to do with how it actually behaves in production. and learns from where the two diverge.

Our agents (we call them Players:) use that context to take on work across the software lifecycle. They learn from each outcome, earning trust and taking on more responsibility over time.

We’re building a future where AI plays an active role in how teams plan, build, and run software. We’re looking for people across disciplines to help shape

About the role

As a Site Reliability Engineer, you’ll improve the reliability, security, and visibility of PlayerZero’s production systems. You’ll combine hands‑on AWS infrastructure operations with automation, monitoring, and application instrumentation to help engineers understand system behavior and resolve problems at their source.

You’ll partner closely with our existing SRE and engineering teams to operate distributed services and stateful data systems, reduce operational toil, and strengthen incident response. We’re looking for someone who can independently investigate complex issues, safely change production infrastructure, and follow improvements through to completion.

What you will do

• Operate production infrastructure and data systems. Maintain AWS environments and systems such as Kafka, Pulsar, and Valkey, including upgrades, replication health, rolling restarts, and failover.

• Automate operational work. Build tools and workflows that eliminate repetitive tasks, reduce manual intervention, and make production operations more consistent.

• Improve monitoring and instrumentation. Work with engineers to instrument application code and strengthen metrics, logs, distributed tracing, dashboards, and actionable alerts.

• Troubleshoot and respond to incidents. Investigate problems across applications, infrastructure, networking, and data systems. Help restore service and turn findings into lasting fixes and useful runbooks.

• Make infrastructure changes and deployments safer. Partner with Platform and application engineers on infrastructure as code, CI/CD, configuration management, rollback practices, and production readiness.

• Keep production systems secure and current. Perform OS and kernel patching, remediate infrastructure vulnerabilities within agreed timelines, and execute safe rolling maintenance.

• Improve performance and resilience. Identify bottlenecks and failure modes, assess capacity needs, and help establish practical service health indicators and reliability targets.

What you bring

• Experience independently operating, troubleshooting, and improving production services in an SRE, production engineering, or similar role.

• Hands‑on AWS production experience, including EC2, VPC networking, IAM, Auto Scaling Groups, and Systems Manager, ideally across multiple accounts.

• Strong fundamentals in Linux, networking, and distributed systems.

• Experience operating distributed data systems such as Kafka, Pulsar, or Redis/Valkey, including upgrades, rolling restarts, replication, and failover.

• Strong programming or scripting skills, with experience building operational automation and improving application instrumentation.

• Experience with metrics, logs, distributed tracing, and alerting, including OpenTelemetry or comparable instrumentation.

• Production experience with infrastructure as code, preferably Terraform, including safely modifying existing infrastructure and state, alongside CI/CD, containers, and repeatable deployment practices.

• Experience responding to production incidents, performing maintenance, and following through on corrective actions.

• Clear communication, sound judgment under pressure, and a collaborative approach to solving problems across teams.

• Experience supporting compliance programs such as SOC 2 or HIPAA, including maintaining technical controls and producing evidence, is also valuable.

What success looks like

Production services and data systems remain healthy through growth, releases, and maintenance. Engineers detect and diagnose problems faster, recurring issues and manual tasks decrease, and infrastructure changes are predictable and recoverable. Incidents lead to lasting improvements, and security maintenance stays current.

Why PlayerZero

PlayerZero is an early leader in AI‑powered production engineering, defining how enterprises use AI to understand, improve, and operate their software.

We’re a small team with meaningful problems to solve and room for each person to make their mark. Whether you’re building the technology, working with customers, or growing the business, you’ll help shape the product, the company, and what customers expect from this emerging category.

If you’re excited by work where the answers aren’t all written yet, and want a hand in writing them, you’ll fit right in.