Site Reliability Engineer II

SHPE Houston; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 116,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

401k with company match

PTO

Parental leave

Medical dental vision

Wellness programs

Learning & development

ERGs

Snacks in offices

Job summary

Axon is hiring a Site Reliability Engineer II to own platform components and grow architectural leadership. You will partner with cross-functional teams building on Axon’s platform, focusing on scalable, reliable systems that process evidence for millions of users.

The role emphasizes Kubernetes-based automation, Terraform/Pulumi, and observability with Grafana, Datadog, or New Relic, with a hybrid Seattle or Boston office, onsite Tue–Fri and some remote days.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering required.
• US citizenship with ability to gain CJIS clearance.
• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems.
• Familiarity with agentic AI tooling or LLM-powered tools.
• Solid experience with microservice architectures and patterns.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to agentic coding workflows and infrastructure as code practices.
• Support architectural decisions and standardization for platform technologies.
• Help design and build a Kubernetes-based platform to automate lifecycle management.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to support platform service consumption.
• Build and operate a self-service datastore platform with best practices.
• Diagnose datastore performance bottlenecks with application teams.

Skills

Kubernetes

GitOps

Observability

Distributed systems

Cloud experience

Microservices

LLM tooling

Education

B.S. in CS or Engineering

Master's degree a plus

Tools

Terraform

Pulumi

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.

As a Site Reliability Engineer II, you'll contribute directly to these systems, taking ownership of well-scoped platform components while growing your ability to make broader architectural calls. You'll partner with teams across Axon who are building on top of our platform, working alongside senior engineers to help design, build, and operate systems that process evidence for millions of people.

Location

- This role is based out of our 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

• Contribute to agentic coding workflows, infrastructure as code practices, and technical code reviews across the platform
• Support architectural decisions and standardization efforts for Axon's platform technologies, under the guidance of senior team members
• Help design and build a Kubernetes based platform that automates the lifecycle management of Axon's core infrastructure
• Collaborate with engineering teams across Axon to support application design patterns as they relate to platform service consumption
• Help build and operate a self service platform that vends datastore solutions with well defined, best practice utilization patterns
• Partner 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
• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience; background in platform automation tooling or developer experience tooling a plus
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems, with a desire to grow into larger-scale architectural work
• Familiarity with agentic AI tooling or LLM-powered developer tools
• Solid experience with microservice architectures and patterns
• Working knowledge 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 relational and/or NoSQL datastores (e.g., MySQL, Cassandra, PostgreSQL)
• Experience with message queue systems such as Kafka
• Working knowledge of infrastructure as code tools such as Terraform or Pulumi

Benefits that Benefit You

• Competitive salary and 401k with employer match
• Discretionary paid time off
• Paid parental leave for all
• Medical, Dental, Vision plans
• Fitness Programs
• Emotional & Mental Wellness support
• Learning & Development programs
• Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)
• And yes, we have snacks in our offices

Benefits listed herein may vary depending on the nature of your employment and the location where you work.

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

$115,500-$184,800 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 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.