Senior Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer

About the job
The company is a leading provider of open source software and operating systems to the global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is widely used in breakthrough enterprise initiatives including public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation, and IoT. As part of our team, you will have the opportunity to work in a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with 1200+ colleagues in 75+ countries and very few office-based roles. Our teams meet two to four times yearly in interesting locations around the world to align on strategy and execution.

We are hiring a Senior Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer to join our Information Systems (IS) team. This position is an exciting opportunity for a senior technologist with an “automation-first” mindset and a passion for Linux to build a successful career with the company. If you have experience in IT operations automation, Infrastructure as Code, and a passion for technology, you will enjoy working with some of the best professionals in the industry at the company.

Job Summary
The IS team at the company supports and maintains all of the company’s IT production services, managing services that are utilized by over 60 million Ubuntu users. As a Senior SRE & Gitops engineer, you will have the opportunity to drive operations automation to the next level, utilizing the best open source infrastructure as code software and software development practices like CI/CD pipelines. In this role, you will also provide critical feedback to developers to enhance the company products and the open-source technologies they are based on by submitting bugs, writing pull requests, and collaborating on design and implementations with other teams within the company.

You will be a part of a global team of SREs working together to provide the best possible services to our company, the company’s customers, and the Ubuntu Community.

As a Senior Site Reliability / Gitops Engineer you will

• Drive the development of automation, Gitops in your team as an embedded tech lead.
• Closely collaborate with the IS architect to align your solutions with the IS architecture vision.
• Design and architect services that IS can offer to the organization as products.
• Apply your experience of IaC to develop infrastructure as code practices within IS by constantly increasing automation and improving IaC processes.
• Automate software operations for re-usability and consistency across private and public clouds, considering the complexities of distributed systems.
• Maintain operational responsibility for all of the company’s core services, networks, and infrastructure.
• Develop skills in troubleshooting, capacity planning, and performance investigation, while setting up and maintaining observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Elasticsearch; design, implement and maintain monitoring and alerting for various systems and services.
• Provide assistance and work with globally distributed engineering, operations, and support peers.
• Be given uninterrupted development time to focus on larger projects and automation of manual tasks.
• Share your experience, know-how and best practices with other team members in design sessions, mentorship, and collaborative work.
• Carry final responsibility for time-critical escalations.

What we are looking for in you

• A modern view on hosting architecture, driven by infrastructure as code across both private and public clouds.
• A product mindset driven to develop products rather than just solutions.
• Python software development experience, preferably with large projects.
• Experience working with Kubernetes or other container orchestration systems.
• Proven exposure to managing and deploying cloud infrastructure with code.
• Practical knowledge of Linux networking, routing, and firewalls.
• Familiarity with various forms of Linux storage, from Ceph to databases.
• Hands-on experience administering enterprise Linux servers.
• Extensive knowledge of cloud computing concepts and technologies.
• Bachelor's degree or greater, preferably in computer science or a related engineering field.
• Excellent communication skills in English across various formats such as email, chat, video or voice calls, and in-person.
• Motivated and able to troubleshoot from the kernel to the web, and willing to seek assistance when necessary.
• A willingness to be flexible and learn new things quickly.
• Be inspired by the needs of fast-changing environments.
• Comfortable working within distributed teams.
• Passionate and knowledgeable about open-source, especially Ubuntu or Debian.

What we offer colleagues
We consider geographical location, experience, and performance in shaping compensation worldwide, with annual reviews to recognize outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus or commission. All team members receive additional benefits that reflect our values and ideals, ensuring fairness globally.

• Distributed work environment with twice-yearly team meetings in person.
• Personal learning and development budget of USD 2,000 per year.
• Annual compensation review.
• Recognition rewards.
• Annual holiday leave.
• Maternity and paternity leave.
• Team Member Assistance Program & Wellness Platform.
• Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues.
• Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long-haul company events.