Site Reliability Engineering Team Lead (Principal SRE)

Cerence Inc.; United States; Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Medical/dental/vision insurance

Paid time off

Paid holidays

RRSP contribution

Equity awards

Remote or hybrid work available

Job summary

Cerence Inc. is seeking a Principal SRE to lead its Site Reliability Engineering team, owning reliability, availability, and onboarding processes for a cloud-native automotive AI platform.

The role combines technical leadership with hands-on execution, setting SLIs/SLOs, managing on‑call, and steering observability and automation initiatives across multiple locations.

Qualifications

• 8+ years hands-on experience in site reliability, DevOps, or cloud platforms including time leading a team or owning a function.
• Hands-on experience with container orchestration frameworks (Kubernetes, Docker, Istio).
• Experience with public cloud platforms (Azure primarily; AWS and Google Cloud).
• Familiarity with observability tooling — metrics pipelines, dashboarding, and alerting (e.g., Zabbix, Prometheus, Grafana).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure‑as‑code practices (e.g., Terraform, Flux).
• Proficiency in at least one scripting or programming language (Python, Go, Shell, etc.).
• Strong UNIX/Linux background, including system configuration, performance debugging, and network fundamentals.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.

Responsibilities

• Help select, mentor, and technically develop the team across multiple locations.
• Set technical direction and priorities for the team, and contribute performance and growth input to their managers.
• Design and maintain a sustainable on‑call rotation; monitor page load and team health as first‑class concerns.
• Own and drive the team's reliability roadmap across a 2–3 quarter horizon.
• Define and govern SLI/SLO/SLA frameworks to hold the contracted availability targets for our customer programs (up to 99.95%).
• Serve as the Tier 2 escalation point for major incidents, partnering with the Global Operations Center.
• Champion blameless postmortem culture and ensure actionable outcomes.
• Lead and improve Production Readiness / NFR reviews with development teams.
• Contribute to root cause analysis and own systemic improvements.
• Act as a named approver for high‑risk production changes.
• Set the strategic direction for metrics, dashboards, and alerting across SLI/SLO, escalation, and automation layers.
• Drive CI/CD automation pipelines for service deployments, rollbacks, and tasks.
• Partner with DevOps and platform teams to evolve shared infrastructure.
• Embed reliability into the SDLC through cross‑functional engagement with managers and architects.
• Participate in service reliability consulting and architectural reviews.
• Communicate reliability posture and risk clearly to stakeholders.

Skills

SRE leadership

Cloud platforms

Kubernetes

Docker

Istio

Azure

AWS/GCP

Observability tooling

CI/CD / IaC

Python/Go/Shell

UNIX/Linux

English communication

Tools

Loki

Thanos

Jira

Confluence

Prometheus

Grafana

Zabbix

Terraform

Flux

Job description

A Moving Experience. Site Reliability Engineering Team Lead (Principal SRE) Job Description Summary The Site Reliability Engineering Team Lead (Principal SRE) leads Cerence's Site Reliability Engineering team, owning the reliability, availability, and operational health of our cloud-native automotive AI platform. This role combines technical leadership of the team and the function with deep technical credibility: you will help select and mentor the team, define the reliability roadmap, govern SLI/SLO/SLA targets, and champion a blameless culture. You will serve as the Tier 2 technical escalation point for major incidents, partner with development leadership to embed reliability into the SDLC, and set strategic direction for observability and automation. This is a Principal-level role on our technical track, with no direct reports: you lead the team and own the function through technical authority. The ideal candidate brings a strong hands‑on background in SRE, cloud platforms, and container orchestration, and a track record of leading site reliability teams.

What we offer

We offer a generous compensation and benefits package (in addition to the base salary), including:

• Annual bonus opportunity
• Insurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability)
• Paid time off
• Paid holidays
• Company contribution to the RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan)
• Equity awards for certain positions and levels
• Remote and/or hybrid work available depending on the position
• All compensation and benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of the underlying plans or programs, as applicable, and may be amended, terminated, or replaced from time to time.

About Cerence

Cerence Inc. (Nasdaq: CRNC | cerence.com) is the global industry leader in creating unique, moving experiences for the automotive world. Spun out from Nuance in October 2019, Cerence works with all of the world's leading automakers — from Ford and Fiat Chrysler to Daimler, Audi and BMW to Geely and SAIC — to transform how a car feels, responds and learns. Our track record is built on more than 20 years of industry experience and more than 325 million cars on the road today, across more than 70 languages.

The Opportunity

We are looking for an experienced Principal SRE to lead our Site Reliability Engineering team and own the reliability function. In this role, you will own the reliability of Cerence's cloud-native voice, gesture, and gaze solutions — systems that power immersive automotive AI experiences at global scale. The function is yours end to end: the reliability roadmap, the SLI/SLO standards, the on‑call model, the Tier 2 escalation path, and approval authority over high‑risk production change. You will set the team's technical direction, build a sustainable team culture, and be the bridge between reliability practice and product delivery. This is a hands‑on leadership role. You will bring both leadership experience and deep technical credibility, enabling you to earn the trust of your team, hold informed architectural conversations, and make sound trade-offs under pressure.

Principal Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Help select, mentor, and technically develop the team, across multiple locations
• Set technical direction and priorities for the team, and contribute performance and growth input to their managers
• Design and maintain a sustainable on‑call rotation; monitor page load and team health as first‑class concerns
• Own and drive the team's reliability roadmap across a 2–3 quarter horizon
• Define and govern SLI/SLO/SLA frameworks to hold the contracted availability targets for our customer programs, which run as high as 99.95%

Incident & Production Excellence

• Serve as the Tier 2 technical escalation point for major incidents, partnering with the Global Operations Center, which owns incident management and response
• Champion blameless postmortem culture — model it, reinforce it, and ensure it produces actionable outcomes
• Lead and continuously improve Production Readiness / NFR reviews with development teams
• Contribute to root cause analysis and own the systemic improvements that come out of it
• Act as a named approver for high‑risk and out‑of‑window production change

Observability & Automation

• Set the strategic direction for metrics, dashboards, and alerting across SLI/SLO, escalation, and automation layers
• Drive development and adoption of CI/CD automation pipelines for service deployments, rollbacks, and operational tasks
• Partner with DevOps and platform teams to evolve shared infrastructure
• Cross‑Functional Engagement: Partner with development managers and architects to embed reliability into the SDLC by default
• Participate in service reliability consulting and architectural reviews
• Communicate reliability posture and risk clearly to technical and non‑technical stakeholders

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of hands‑on experience in site reliability, DevOps, or cloud platform roles, including time leading a team or owning a function
• A track record of setting technical direction and holding standards across a team — with or without formal authority
• Hands‑on experience with container orchestration frameworks (Kubernetes, Docker, Istio)
• Experience with public cloud platforms (Azure primarily; AWS and Google Cloud)
• Familiarity with observability tooling — metrics pipelines, dashboarding, and alerting (e.g., Zabbix, Prometheus, Grafana)
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure‑as‑code practices (e.g., Terraform, Flux)
• Proficiency in at least one scripting or programming language (Python, Go, Shell, etc.)
• Strong UNIX/Linux background, including system configuration, performance debugging, and network fundamentals (Layer 4/5, DNS, HTTP/S, TLS)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous site reliability leadership experience
• Experience leading distributed or multi‑site technical teams
• Background in high‑availability service design (redundancy, failover, blast radius)
• Experience with log aggregation and analytics platforms (Loki, Thanos)
• Familiarity with ITSM and project tooling (Jira, Confluence)
• Experience in automotive, embedded, or latency‑sensitive production environments

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Cerence is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of age, race, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex, sex stereotyping, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, citizenship status, sexual orientation, protected military or veteran status, genetic information and other protected classifications. Cerence Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

All prospective and current Employees need to remain vigilant when it comes to executing security policies in the workplace. This includes:- Following workplace security protocols and training programs to familiarize with the ways to maintain a safe workplace.- Following security procedures to report any suspicious activity.- Having respect for corporate security procedures to allow those procedures to be effective.- Adhering to company's compliance and regulations.- Encouraging to follow a zero tolerance for workplace violence.- Basic knowledge of information security and data privacy requirements (e.g., how to protect data & how to be handling this data).- Demonstrative knowledge of information security through internal training programs.

At Cerence AI, we help the world's leading automotive and technology brands leverage AI to create safer, more productive and more joy‑filled brand and user experiences. We're looking for motivated, collaborative individuals who come alive with big challenges and are excited about AI's potential to shape the future of how people experience the world.