Staff Site Reliability Engineer

Circle; United States; Remote; USD 195,000 - 258,000; Full time

Job summary

Circle is seeking a Staff Site Reliability Engineer for its Platform team to design, build, and operate scalable blockchain infrastructure across public clouds, with a focus on reliability, performance, and automation. You’ll own Kubernetes platforms, CI/CD, and IaC, collaborating with engineering, product, and security teams.

You’ll mentor engineers, contribute to architecture, and participate in on‑call rotations and post‑incident reviews to improve platform resilience.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in SRE, DevOps, or Infrastructure Engineering.
• Experience operating blockchain nodes and distributed systems in production.
• Kubernetes proficiency including Helm, RBAC, operators, and observability tooling.
• Hands-on experience building CI/CD pipelines and containerized workloads.
• IaC experience with Terraform or Pulumi and cloud networking basics.
• Go or Python to build platform automation and tooling.
• Experience managing SQL databases with reliability and performance focus.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional technical initiatives and communicate across teams.

Responsibilities

• Operate and scale production blockchain infrastructure and nodes across networks.
• Design and maintain highly available Kubernetes platforms with automation and self-healing workloads.
• Develop CI/CD pipelines, deployment workflows, and IaC using Terraform or Pulumi.
• Create AI-powered tooling to improve engineering productivity and reliability.
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and participate in on-call rotations and post-incident reviews.
• Collaborate with protocol, product, and security teams to support launches and upgrades.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to platform reliability improvements.

Skills

Kubernetes

Go

Python

Infrastructure as Code

CI/CD

Distributed systems

Blockchain infrastructure

Leadership

Observability

Tools

Terraform

Pulumi

Helm

Docker

CI/CD pipelines tooling

Job description

What you’ll be part of:

Circle (NYSE: CRCL) is one of the world’s leading internet financial platform companies, building the foundation of a more open, global economy through digital assets, payment applications, and programmable blockchain infrastructure. Circle’s platform includes the world’s largest regulated stablecoin network anchored by USDC, Circle Payments Network for global money movement, and Arc, an enterprise-grade blockchain designed to become the Economic OS for the internet. Enterprises, financial institutions, and developers use Circle to power trusted, internet-scale financial innovation. Learn more at circle.com.

What you’ll be responsible for:

As a Staff Site Reliability Engineer on Circle’s Platform team, you’ll design, build, and operate the infrastructure that powers our blockchain platform at scale. You’ll own the reliability, performance, and automation of distributed blockchain systems across multiple public cloud environments, leveraging Kubernetes, Infrastructure as Code, and modern SRE practices to deliver resilient, secure, and highly available services.

Working closely with engineering, protocol, product, and security teams, you’ll build AI-powered tooling and automation that improves operational excellence, accelerates developer productivity, and enables the rapid delivery of new blockchain capabilities. This role is ideal for an engineer who thrives in high-ownership environments, enjoys solving complex distributed systems challenges, and is passionate about advancing the reliability and scalability of blockchain infrastructure.

What you'll work on:

• Operate and scale production blockchain infrastructure, managing full nodes across networks such as Arc, Ethereum, Solana, Base, and other supported protocols.
• Design, build, and maintain highly available, secure Kubernetes platforms with a focus on automation, resilience, and self-healing workloads.
• Build and improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment workflows, and Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, Pulumi, and cloud-native tooling.
• Develop AI-powered infrastructure automation, including Kubernetes lifecycle management, IaC analysis, blockchain cost optimization, and MCP server integrations to improve engineering productivity.
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize distributed systems, participating in a follow‑the‑sun on‑call rotation, incident response, and post‑incident reviews to improve platform reliability.
• Partner closely with protocol, product, and security teams to deliver reliable infrastructure that supports network launches, upgrades, and evolving business requirements.
• Drive technical excellence by mentoring engineers, sharing SRE best practices, and contributing to architecture and reliability improvements across the platform.

Here is our team hierarchy for individual contributors:

Staff Site Reliability Engineer (IV)

Senior Site Reliability Engineer (III)

What you’ll bring to Circle (not all required):

Senior Site Reliability Engineer (III)

• 4+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps, or Infrastructure Engineering, ideally supporting cloud‑native platforms.
• Experience operating and troubleshooting blockchain nodes and other distributed systems in production environments.
• Strong experience with Kubernetes, including Helm, RBAC, operators, controllers, and observability tooling.
• Hands‑on experience building CI/CD pipelines, containerized workloads, and modern deployment strategies such as blue‑green and canary releases.
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code using Terraform or Pulumi and cloud networking fundamentals, including VPCs, DNS, load balancers, and secure connectivity.
• Proficiency in Go or Python to build platform automation, infrastructure tooling, and operational workflows.
• Experience managing SQL databases and stateful production services with a strong understanding of reliability and performance.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross‑functional technical initiatives, make sound decisions in ambiguous situations, and communicate effectively across engineering teams.

Preferred Requirements

• Passion for crypto and blockchain infrastructure, with experience building AI-enabled infrastructure tooling or agentic workflows; familiarity with MCP servers and responsible use of generative AI to improve engineering productivity is a plus.

Staff Site Reliability Engineer (IV)

All the requirements of a Senior Site Reliability Engineer and:

• 6+ years of experience in SRE, DevOps, or Infrastructure Engineering, ideally within a cloud‑native or blockchain environment;
• Proven track record of technical leadership in complex, distributed systems architecture and design.
• Deep expertise in:
  • Blockchain protocols and their infrastructure demands
  • Kubernetes internals and tuning for large‑scale workloads.
  • Agentic automation strategies and applying AI tooling in real‑world engineering workflows.
  • Observability and chaos engineering techniques to stress‑test reliability.
• Experience mentoring engineers and scaling SRE best practices across teams.
• Strong engineering judgment with a passion for code quality, automated testing, and operational excellence.

Circle is on a mission to create an inclusive financial future, with transparency at our core. We consider a wide variety of elements when crafting our compensation ranges and total compensation packages.

Starting pay is determined by various factors, including but not limited to: relevant experience, skill set, qualifications, and other business and organizational needs. Please note that compensation ranges may differ for candidates in other locations.

Base Pay Range: $195,000-$257,500

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status, or any other protected status required by the laws in the locations where we hire. Additionally, Circle participates in the E-Verify Program in certain locations, as required by law.

Should you require accommodations or assistance in our interview process because of a disability, please reach out to [e-mail] for support. We respect your privacy and will connect with you separately from our interview process to accommodate your needs.

#LI-Remote