Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Role Purpose

The Senior Site Reliability Engineer improves the reliability, resilience, scalability and performance of critical services. The role combines software engineering, automation and operational expertise to reduce manual effort, strengthen production readiness and enable sustainable service delivery.

Working closely with product, engineering, platform, application and security teams, the Senior Site Reliability Engineer embeds reliability principles throughout the service lifecycle and provides technical guidance to colleagues.

Key Responsibilities

Reliability Architecture and Engineering

• Drive improvements to service availability, performance, scalability and resilience.
• Assess the operational readiness of new and evolving services, ensuring that designs and releases meet agreed reliability and performance standards.
• Identify architectural weaknesses and service dependencies, and recommend practical improvements.

Automation and Delivery Engineering

• Design and maintain reusable automation frameworks that reduce repetitive operational work and improve consistency.
• Develop and enhance CI/CD pipelines, automated validation and deployment assurance practices.
• Promote automation across teams to improve delivery efficiency and operational reliability.

Observability and Continuous Improvement

• Establish observability standards covering monitoring, telemetry and actionable alerting.
• Analyse operational data, performance trends and service behaviour to identify emerging issues and improvement opportunities.
• Develop prioritised reliability improvement roadmaps aligned with business needs and operational risks.

Incident, Problem and Change Management

• Coordinate technical recovery efforts during service incidents, engaging the appropriate teams and communicating clearly with stakeholders.
• Lead structured post-incident reviews and root cause analysis, translating findings into preventive actions.
• Support effective change planning and validation to reduce disruption and maintain service stability.

Resilience, Continuity and Risk Management

• Plan and facilitate resilience testing and contribute to business continuity and recovery planning.
• Evaluate failure scenarios, service dependencies and operational risks.
• Drive targeted improvements that strengthen recovery capabilities and maintain service delivery during disruptions.

Collaboration and Technical Leadership

• Partner with cross-functional teams to integrate reliability requirements into system design, development and operations.
• Mentor fellow engineers, share technical expertise and facilitate training and operational readiness reviews.
• Coordinate technical activities across teams and influence decisions through sound engineering judgement.

Knowledge and Professional Development

• Maintain accurate technical documentation, operational procedures and reusable knowledge resources.
• Apply relevant policies, procedures and industry practices to engineering and operational activities.
• Continuously develop technical capabilities and translate emerging practices into actionable recommendations.

Experience and Qualifications

• A bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Substantial relevant experience in site reliability engineering, software engineering, platform engineering or production operations; typically six to ten years, with demonstrated depth of expertise.
• Practical experience coordinating technical work and guiding colleagues across team boundaries.
• Demonstrated success improving the reliability and operational efficiency of complex services.

Technical Capabilities

• Strong programming and solution development skills, with the ability to build maintainable automation and reliable, scalable solutions.
• Advanced expertise in CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation and delivery assurance.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, observability and performance analysis.
• Proven capability in incident response, root cause analysis and problem management.
• Experience with resilience engineering, systems optimisation, dependency analysis and recovery planning.
• Ability to assess existing architectures and operational processes and define prioritised improvements.

Core Competencies

• Accountability: Takes ownership of commitments, service outcomes and corrective actions.
• Sound judgement: Makes timely decisions using evidence, risk assessment and clear trade-offs.
• Effective communication: Explains technical issues clearly and adapts communication to different audiences.
• Collaboration: Builds productive partnerships and works towards shared objectives.
• Planning and alignment: Prioritises work, anticipates dependencies and coordinates delivery.
• Adaptability: Responds constructively to changing requirements, incidents and organisational priorities.
• Organisational awareness: Navigates established processes and stakeholder relationships effectively.

Success Measures

Success is demonstrated through measurable improvements in service reliability and performance, reduced manual operational effort, fewer recurring incidents, effective recovery capabilities and consistent adoption of reliable engineering practices.

Requirements

Requirements

Experience and Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Typically six to ten years of relevant experience in site reliability engineering, software engineering, platform engineering or production operations. Demonstrated capability and relevant achievements are more important than a fixed number of years.
• Experience coordinating technical activities, mentoring engineers and contributing to cross-functional initiatives.

Technical Expertise

• Strong programming skills and experience developing reusable automation and maintainable engineering solutions.
• Advanced experience designing, implementing and improving CI/CD pipelines, automated validation and deployment assurance practices.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, service architecture, scalability, performance and reliability engineering.
• Hands-on experience implementing observability, monitoring and actionable alerting, and analysing telemetry to improve service performance.
• Proven experience managing production incidents, conducting root cause analysis and implementing measures to prevent recurrence.
• Experience with resilience testing, recovery planning, dependency analysis and operational risk mitigation.
• Ability to assess production readiness and translate operational findings into prioritised engineering improvements.
• Experience maintaining technical documentation, operational procedures and shared knowledge resources.

Professional Competencies

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to make sound decisions under pressure.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical topics to different audiences.
• Strong ownership and accountability for commitments and service outcomes.
• Effective collaboration across product, engineering, platform, application and security teams.
• Ability to prioritise competing demands, coordinate dependencies and align work with business objectives.
• Adaptability and a continuous improvement mindset, supported by a commitment to ongoing professional development.
• Ability to work independently, provide technical guidance and apply relevant organisational policies and procedures.