Staff Site Reliability Engineer

Crisis Text Line, Inc.; Seattle (WA); Remote; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Crisis Text Line, Inc. is seeking a Staff Site Reliability Engineer to lead a team in maintaining and securing their infrastructure. This remote role involves optimizing performance, driving automation, and collaborating with developers to enhance the reliability of their services, all while supporting a mission-driven environment.

Benefits

20 paid holidays including federal holidays and election day

Flexible paid time off - 15 vacation days, 3 personal days, 7 sick days

Medical, dental, and vision benefits at no cost

403B retirement plan with employer contribution

12 weeks paid parental leave

Student loan repayment after 2 years

Virtual childcare platform support

Monthly stipends for mental health and internet service

Home office setup stipend

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in infrastructure management, automation, SRE practices.
• Proficiency in AWS and infrastructure as code.
• Experience maintaining reliability for SaaS applications.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a team of SREs; enhance engineer productivity through automation.
• Design and implement AWS infrastructure; ensure system health through monitoring.
• Respond to incidents and ensure minimal downtime.

Skills

Automation

Infrastructure Management

Collaboration

Problem Solving

Effective Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Master's degree (preferred)

Tools

AWS

Terraform

Docker

Kubernetes

Github Actions

Job description

This is a remote position.

Role

Job Summary: As a Staff Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), reporting to the Senior Engineering Manager of SRE/Infrastructure, you will be a key technical leader ensuring the reliability, scalability, and security of our platform. In this role, you will play a strategic part in architecting, building, and maintaining the tooling that empowers our software engineering teams and managing the infrastructure that supports our staff and volunteers in delivering the Crisis Text Line service. You will collaborate closely with developers to drive performance optimization, implement best practices, and ensure a secure environment. With a significant focus on enhancing engineer productivity through automation and streamlined workflows, you’ll directly contribute to our mission of supporting texters, volunteers, and staff. This position requires extensive experience in infrastructure management, automation, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices.

Key Responsibilities:

• Assisting to lead and mentor a team of 5 SREs, fostering a collaborative and innovative work environment.
• Working closely with the 3 staff in TechOps/Security on enforcement of security best practices across the infrastructure and development processes.
• Design, implement, and maintain our highly available and scalable AWS infrastructure that powers our service.
• Collaborate with developers to optimize application performance and reliability.
• Develop and maintain monitoring, logging, and alerting systems to ensure system health and performance.
• Automate repetitive tasks and processes to improve efficiency and reduce manual intervention.
• Respond to and resolve incidents, minimizing downtime and ensuring quick recovery.
• Support and encourage a diversity of backgrounds, voices, and perspectives on the engineering team
• Proactively communicate expectations, progress, and issues to engineers, product managers, and other colleagues with clarity and kindness, delivering and receiving feedback respectfully
• Spread knowledge, provide mentorship, and promote technical best practices
• Learn both independently and from your colleagues, stretch yourself, and grow as an engineer and teammate
• Write and review high-quality, easy-to-read, and testable code that follows best practices
• Manage time successfully by focusing on priorities, delivering on deadlines, and asking for help when stuck
• Providing engineering input and estimating work both during refinement and architecture design.
• Participate in retrospectives and post-mortems to improve our processes and operations
• Conduct regular security audits and vulnerability assessments, addressing any identified issues.
• Stay up-to-date with industry trends and emerging technologies, recommending and implementing improvements as needed.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (Master's degree preferred).
• Proven experience as a Staff SRE or in a similar SRE role, with experience in observability and chose engineering. strong focus on infrastructure and DevOps in a software delivery capacity.
• Experience maintaining the reliability of online SaaS/PaaS with a 7/24 schedule.
• Proficiency in AWS and infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation).
• Strong scripting and automation skills and in-depth knowledge of containerization and orchestration (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• Proven experience in implementing CI/CD pipelines and tools (Github Actions) and observability tools (Datadog).
• A commitment to ethical practices, data privacy, and security.
• Solid understanding of network protocols, security principles, and best practices.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work under pressure, with strong communication skills to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Ability to learn quickly and manage your time successfully by focusing on priorities, delivering on deadlines, and asking for help when needed.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrates an understanding of essential computer science principles and how to apply them to solve problems. This including basic data structures, control structures and functions

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Experience implementing Failure Injection / Chaos Engineering practices.
• Cloud Solution Architect certifications or completed training (e.g. AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials and/or AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate) GCP or Azure.
• Strong experience with AWS Solution Architecture across various web applications and APIs, Databricks, and AI/ML workloads.
• Knowledge of compliance and regulatory standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001, SOC2, etc.).
• Experience in a non-profit or mission-driven organization.

Benefits:

Crisis Text Line employee benefits are thoughtfully designed using an equity lens, acknowledging that we are all unique human beings with individual life circumstances that require flexibility and support.

Benefits include:

• 20 paid holidays including:
  • Federal holidays like Juneteenth and Labor Day
  • Election day
  • Holiday break from Dec 24 through January 1
  • 2 renewal days
  • 2 floating holidays
• Flexible paid time off, including:
  • 15 vacation days
  • 3 personal days
  • 7 sick days
• Medical, dental, and vision benefits for the staff member and family at no cost to the employee
• 403B retirement plan (the nonprofit equivalent of a 401K): 3% contribution by Crisis Text Line to support building financial wellness, regardless of personal contribution
• 12 weeks paid parental leave (after 6 months of employment)
• Student loan repayment (after 2 years of continuous full time service)
• Family support through a virtual childcare platform
• Stipends/Allowances
  • Mental health (Monthly)
  • Internet Service (Monthly)
  • Professional Development (Annual)
  • Wellness (Annual)
  • Home office setup (One time/First year)

(Benefits are only for US-based employees. International benefits may differ).