Staff Site Reliability Engineer

Archer; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 133,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Archer is hiring a Staff Site Reliability Engineer in San Jose to enhance system resilience, build internal tools, and advance our observability stack. You will implement SLOs/SLIs, automate remediation, and deliver dashboards for engineers and executives, reducing toil and elevating reliability.

Requirements include 8+ years in SRE/DevOps, strong programming skills, and expertise in Kubernetes, Terraform, and observability.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in SRE, Production Engineering, or high-scale DevOps environments.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals; comfortable implementing microservices or APIs.
• Deep understanding of deriving meaningful SLIs from distributed systems.
• Kubernetes (EKS/GKE/self-managed) expertise; IaC with Terraform or Pulumi; Observability with Prometheus, Jaeger, Datadog.
• Ability to distill complex health data into clear reports for engineers and leadership.

Responsibilities

• Standardize SRE procedures across the service catalog.
• Instrument SLOs/SLIs and manage error budgets with automated alerts.
• Build internal tooling (e.g., Kubernetes operators, remediation scripts, safety gates).
• Create Grafana/Datadog dashboards for real-time debugging and executive views.
• Reduce toil by automating repetitive tasks.
• Provide expert-level code reviews and contribute to internal platform codebase.

Skills

SRE experience

Advanced programming

Metric logic

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

Pulumi

Observability tools

Job description

Archer is an aerospace company based in San Jose, California building an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft with a mission to advance the benefits of sustainable air mobility. We are designing, manufacturing, and operating an all-electric aircraft that can carry four passengers while producing minimal noise.

Our sights are set high and our problems are hard, and we believe that diversity in the workplace is what makes us smarter, drives better insights, and will ultimately lift us all to success. We are dedicated to cultivating an equitable and inclusive environment that embraces our differences, and supports and celebrates all of our team members.

Staff Site Reliability Engineer

The Role

We are looking for a Staff Site Reliability Engineer to join our SRE organization as a technical specialist. In this role, you will focus on engineering the "glue" that makes our systems resilient—building custom internal tools, refining our observability stack, and ensuring our SLO/SLI frameworks are technically sound. You will work alongside our existing SRE teams to convert manual operational tasks into automated, programmable infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

• Standardize SRE Procedures: Design and implement consistent technical procedures for incident response, error budget tracking, and production readiness across our service catalog.
• Engineer SLOs & SLIs: Technically instrument our services to capture precise SLIs. You will be responsible for the backend logic that calculates Error Budgets and triggers automated alerts based on burn rates.
• Build Special Purpose Tooling: Write production-grade code (Go, Python, etc.) to build internal tools that solve specific infrastructure gaps, such as custom Kubernetes operators, automated remediation scripts, or deployment safety gates.
• Executive & Operational Dashboards: Create a unified observability layer. This includes deep-dive Grafana/Datadog dashboards for real-time debugging and high-level, aggregate views for executive stakeholders to monitor SLA compliance.
• Toil Reduction: Identify repetitive operational tasks across the group and build the automation necessary to eliminate them.
• Collaborative Engineering: Work within the SRE group to provide expert-level code reviews for infrastructure changes and contribute to the collective codebase of our internal platforms.

Technical Requirements

• Experience: 8+ years in SRE, Production Engineering, or high-scale DevOps environments.
• Advanced Programming: Strong software engineering fundamentals. You should be as comfortable writing a microservice or a custom API as you are configuring a load balancer.
• Metric Logic: Deep understanding of how to derive meaningful SLIs from complex distributed systems (latency percentiles, success rates, etc.).
• The Stack:
• Orchestration: Expert-level Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, or self-managed).
• IaC: Advanced Terraform or Pulumi.
• Observability: Mastery of the "Three Pillars" (Logs, Metrics, Traces) using tools like Prometheus, Jaeger, or Datadog.
• Communication: Ability to distill complex system health data into clear, actionable reports for both engineers and business leadership.

Please note that this job description is intended to provide a general overview of the position and does not include an exhaustive list of responsibilities and qualifications

At Archer we aim to attract, retain, and motivate talent that possess the skills and leadership necessary to grow our business. We drive a pay-for-performance culture and reward performance that supports the Company’s business strategy. For this position we are targeting a base pay between 133,400 - 200,000. Actual compensation offered will be determined by factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Archer is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. All aspects of employment are decided on the basis of merit, qualifications, and business needs. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

"Successful candidates must be able to demonstrate U.S. citizenship, permanent residency, or status as a protected individual to satisfy ITAR, contractual, and/or regulatory requirements."

Archer is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to job applicants with physical or mental disabilities, and those with sincerely held religious beliefs. Applicants who may require reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process should provide their name and contact information to Archer’s People Team at [e-mail]. Reasonable accommodations will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Information collected and processed as part of any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Archer's Candidate Privacy Policy.

Archer is unable to provide work visa sponsorship for this position at the present time.

Archer is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. All aspects of employment are decided on the basis of merit, qualifications, and business needs. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Archer Aviation does not engage with external recruiting agencies/individual recruiters with whom it does not have a prior written agreement. Archer reserves the right to make use of any unsolicited resumes that it receives and bears no responsibility for payment of any fees asserted from the use of unsolicited resumes. If you are a recruiting agency or individual recruiter wishing to do business with Archer, please reach out to [e-mail]. All employment processes are managed by the Archer People Team.