Site Reliability Engineer I

OpenKrill; United States; Remote; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Backblaze in the United States is seeking a Systems Administrator/SRE to join our storage-focused team. You will be the first line of defense for critical infrastructure and drive incident resolution across multiple sites.

Ideal candidates have 2-4 years in Linux operations, strong fundamentals, and hands-on automation experience with tools like Ansible and Jenkins. This role offers on-call flexibility and opportunities to improve reliability.

Qualifications

• 2–4 years hands-on experience in Systems Administration, Linux Operations, or SRE environments.
• Strong Linux fundamentals with CLI, networking basics, and IP classifications.
• Problem solving and automation mindset; ability to learn and troubleshoot complex hardware/software interactions.
• Excellent cross-functional communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Act as the primary point of contact for customer-affecting technical issues and lead real-time incident resolution.
• Adhere to incident management protocols and drive post-mortems for process improvements and root-cause analyses.
• Monitor and respond to Zabbix, Grafana, and OpenSearch alerts with remediation or escalation.
• Ensure health and reliability of storage pods across sites using Ansible and config changes.
• Serve as escalation point for Data Center Technicians on advanced troubleshooting and migration queries.
• Manage pre-deployment configuration and testing for Vault systems and perform health checks on migration pods.
• Use Jenkins to deploy code updates across environments.
• Identify and document network anomalies and IP assignments for upcoming deployments.
• Seek opportunities to automate daily operational tasks and document workflows.
• Participate in an on-call rotation with flexibility to work outside standard hours.

Skills

Linux

SRE practices

Incident response

Automation

Monitoring

Networking basics

Communication

Tools

Jenkins

Ansible

Git

Zabbix

Grafana

OpenSearch

Job description

About Backblaze

Backblaze is the object storage leader in the open cloud movement, fueling customer success with cloud storage built purposefully to unlock budgets, unburden administrators, and unleash innovators. Together with our partners, we're helping customers break free from the restrictive, overpriced legacy solutions that hold them back, and blaze forward with the full power of the open cloud in their hands.

Founded in 2007, we scaled the business with less than $3 million in outside funding until 2021, when we did a traditional IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Today, Backblaze generates over $100m in revenue and is the leading specialized storage cloud-managing over three billion gigabytes of data storage for 500K+ customers in 175+ countries, including businesses, developers, IT professionals, and individuals.

What You'll Do

• First Line of Defense: Act as the primary point of contact for customer-affecting technical issues and lead real-time incident resolution.
• Incident Management: Adhere to incident management protocols and drive post-mortems to capture process improvements and root-cause analyses.
• Monitoring & Alerting: Monitor and respond to Zabbix, Grafana and Opensearch alerts - taking direct remediation steps or managing seamless escalations.
• Infrastructure & Pod Health: Ensure the health and reliability of storage pods across all sites (defining and refining monitoring alert definitions and completing daily tasks relating to hardware replacement diagnosis, system troubleshooting and executing needed configuration changes via Ansible and a Git repository framework).
• Data Center Tech Support: Serve as an escalation point for Data Center Technicians regarding advanced pod troubleshooting, deployment queries, migration issues, and Ansible playbooks.
• Migrations & Provisioning: Manage pre-deployment configuration and testing for Vault systems, initiate Vault migrations, and perform health checks on migration pods.
• Code Deployments: Use Jenkins to deploy code updates across all our environments.
• Network & Operations: Identify and elevate network anomalies, document network IP assignments for upcoming deployments, and track server farm releases/updates.
• Automation & Process: Identify opportunities to automate daily operational tasks and document workflow procedures.
• On-Call & Flexibility: Participate in an on-call rotation shift, with flexibility to work outside standard business hours (including weekends, evenings, or holidays) as operational needs arise.

The Right Fit

• Location: Must be based in the United States and eligible to work without visa sponsorship.
• Experience: 2-4 years of hands-on experience in Systems Administration, Linux Operations, or SRE environments.
• Technical Fundamentals: Strong foundational understanding of Linux systems, command-line interfaces, network cabling/topologies, and IP network classifications.
• Problem Solving & Automation: Analytical mindset with a drive to learn, troubleshoot complex hardware/software interactions, and automate repetitive tasks.
• Communication: Excellent cross-functional communication and collaboration skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

Even if you don’t meet 100% of the qualifications listed above, we still encourage you to apply! Learning, developing, and growing are key parts of our culture.

At Backblaze, diversity, equity, and inclusion are core to our values. We are committed to fostering a workplace where all employees feel a sense of belonging regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status.

Backblaze is an Equal Opportunity Employer (EOE) and participates in E-Verify.