{"id":1006885,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cerence-site-reliability-engineering-team-lead-principal-sre","title":"Site Reliability Engineering Team Lead (Principal SRE)","company":{"id":178070,"name":"Cerence","domain":"cerence.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/cerence","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"C","score":63,"open_postings":26,"ghost_share":0.615,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":35,"computed_at":"2026-11-11T05:49:22Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Montreal, Canada","United States","Canada"],"countries":["CA","US"],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":163000,"max_usd":286000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":289},"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"DNS","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Grafana","optional":false},{"name":"Incident Management","optional":false},{"name":"Istio","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"Prometheus","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"SLI/SLO/SLA","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"Unix","optional":false},{"name":"Zabbix","optional":false},{"name":"Confluence","optional":true},{"name":"ITSM","optional":true},{"name":"Jira","optional":true},{"name":"Loki","optional":true},{"name":"Thanos","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-17T17:25:22Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-29","last_verified_at":"2026-11-11T14:32:13Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":55,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":54},"description":"A Moving Experience.\nSite Reliability Engineering Team Lead (Principal SRE)\nJob Description Summary\nThe Site Reliability Engineering Team Lead (Principal SRE) leads Cerence's Site Reliability Engineering team, owning the reliability, availability, and operational health of our cloud-native automotive AI platform. This role combines technical leadership of the team and the function with deep technical credibility: you will help select and mentor the team, define the reliability roadmap, govern SLI/SLO/SLA targets, and champion a blameless culture. You will serve as the Tier 2 technical escalation point for major incidents, partner with development leadership to embed reliability into the SDLC, and set strategic direction for observability and automation. This is a Principal-level role on our technical track, with no direct reports: you lead the team and own the function through technical authority. The ideal candidate brings a strong hands-on background in SRE, cloud platforms, and container orchestration, and a track record of leading site reliability teams.\nWhat we offer\nWe offer a generous compensation and benefits package (in addition to the base salary), including: \nAnnual bonus opportunity \nInsurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability) \nPaid time off \nPaid holidays \nCompany contribution to the RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan) \nEquity awards for certain positions and levels \nRemote and/or hybrid work available depending on the position All compensation and benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of the underlying plans or programs, as applicable, and may be amended, terminated, or replaced from time to time. \nAbout Cerence\nCerence Inc. (Nasdaq: CRNC | cerence.com) is the global industry leader in creating unique, moving experiences for the automotive world. Spun out from Nuance in October 2019, Cerence works with all of the world's leading automakers - from Ford and Fiat Chrysler to Daimler, Audi and BMW to Geely and SAIC - to transform how a car feels, responds and learns. Our track record is built on more than 20 years of industry experience and more than 325 million cars on the road today, across more than 70 languages.\nThe Opportunity\nWe are looking for an experienced Principal SRE to lead our Site Reliability Engineering team and own the reliability function. In this role, you will own the reliability of Cerence's cloud-native voice, gesture, and gaze solutions - systems that power immersive automotive AI experiences at global scale. The function is yours end to end: the reliability roadmap, the SLI/SLO standards, the on-call model, the Tier 2 escalation path, and approval authority over high-risk production change. You will set the team's technical direction, build a sustainable team culture, and be the bridge between reliability practice and product delivery.\nThis is a hands-on leadership role. You will bring both leadership experience and deep technical credibility, enabling you to earn the trust of your team, hold informed architectural conversations, and make sound trade-offs under pressure.\nPrincipal Responsibilities\nTechnical Leadership\nHelp select, mentor, and technically develop the team, across multiple locations\nSet technical direction and priorities for the team, and contribute performance and growth input to their managers\nDesign and maintain a sustainable on-call rotation; monitor page load and team health as first-class concerns\nReliability Strategy\nOwn and drive the team's reliability roadmap across a 2-3 quarter horizon\nDefine and govern SLI/SLO/SLA frameworks to hold the contracted availability targets for our customer programs, which run as high as 99.95%\nIncident & Production Excellence\nServe as the Tier 2 technical escalation point for major incidents, partnering with the Global Operations Center, which owns incident management and response\nChampion blameless postmortem culture - model it, reinforce it, and ensure it produces actionable outcomes\nLead and continuously improve Production Readiness / NFR reviews with development teams\nContribute to root cause analysis and own the systemic improvements that come out of it\nAct as a named approver for high-risk and out-of-window production change\nObservability & Automation\nSet the strategic direction for metrics, dashboards, and alerting across SLI/SLO, escalation, and automation layers\nDrive development and adoption of CI/CD automation pipelines for service deployments, rollbacks, and operational tasks\nPartner with DevOps and platform teams to evolve shared infrastructure\nCross-Functional Engagement\nPartner with development managers and architects to embed reliability into the SDLC by default\nParticipate in service reliability consulting and architectural reviews\nCommunicate reliability posture and risk clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders\nRequired Qualifications\n8+ years of hands-on experience in site reliability, DevOps, or cloud platform roles, including time leading a team or owning a function\nA track record of setting technical direction and holding standards across a team - with or without formal authority\nHands-on experience with container orchestration frameworks (Kubernetes, Docker, Istio)\nExperience with public cloud platforms (Azure primarily; AWS and Google Cloud)\nFamiliarity with observability tooling - metrics pipelines, dashboarding, and alerting (e.g., Zabbix, Prometheus, Grafana)\nExperience with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code practices (e.g., Terraform, Flux)\nProficiency in at least one scripting or programming language (Python, Go, Shell, etc.)\nStrong UNIX/Linux background, including system configuration, performance debugging, and network fundamentals (Layer 4/5, DNS, HTTP/S, TLS)\nExcellent written and verbal communication skills in English\nPreferred Qualifications\nPrevious site reliability leadership experience\nExperience leading distributed or multi-site technical teams\nBackground in high-availability service design (redundancy, failover, blast radius)\nExperience with log aggregation and analytics platforms (Loki, Thanos)\nFamiliarity with ITSM and project tooling (Jira, Confluence)\nExperience in automotive, embedded, or latency-sensitive production environments\nWhat We Offer\nWe offer a generous compensation and benefits package (in addition to the base salary), including:\nSalary range $132,00.00 - $211,400.00 USD. / $113,115.00 CDN - $ 180,985.00 CDN It is not typical for offers to be made at or near the top of the range. The actual salary will be determined based on experience and other job-related factors. \nAnnual bonus opportunity \nInsurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability) \nPaid time off \nPaid holidays \nCompany contribution to the 401(k) plan / RRSP (Canada)\nEquity awards for certain positions and levels \nAll compensation and benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of the underlying plans or programs, as applicable, and may be amended, terminated, or replaced from time to time.\nCerence Inc. (Nasdaq: CRNC and www.cerence.com) is the global industry leader in creating unique, moving experiences for the automotive world. Spun out from Nuance in October 2019, Cerence is a new, independent company that has quickly gained traction as a leader in the automotive voice assistant space, working with all of the world’s leading automakers - from Ford and Fiat Chrysler to Daimler, Audi and BMW to Geely and SAIC - to transform how a car feels, responds and learns. Its track record is built on more than 20 years of industry experience and leadership and more than 500 million cars on the road today across more than 70 languages.\nAs Cerence looks to the future and continues an ambitious growth agenda, we need someone to join the team and help build the future of voice and AI in cars. This is an exciting opportunity to join Cerence’s passionate, dedicated, global team and be a part of meaningful innovation in a rapidly growing industry.\nEQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER\nCerence is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of age, race, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex, sex stereotyping, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, citizenship status, sexual orientation, protected military or veteran status, genetic information and other protected classifications. Cerence Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.\nAll prospective and current Employees need to remain vigilant when it comes to executing security policies in the workplace. This includes:\n- Following workplace security protocols and training programs to familiarize with the ways to maintain a safe workplace.\n- Following security procedures to report any suspicious activity.\n- Having respect for corporate security procedures to allow those procedures to be effective.\n- Adhering to company's compliance and regulations.\n- Encouraging to follow a zero tolerance for workplace violence.\n- Basic knowledge of information security and data privacy requirements (e.g., how to protect data & how to be handling this data).\n- Demonstrative knowledge of information security through internal training programs.","description_format":"text","description_chars":9319,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"All levels","optional":false}]},"benefits":["Equity","Hybrid work","Insurance coverage","Retirement plans"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Conversational AI","Speech & Audio AI","Automotive Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-17T17:25:22Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-09-28T22:38:40Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-09-30T05:39:37Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":24,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.544,"p_room":0.45,"age_days":54,"expected_fill_days":35,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-11-11T05:49:22Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/cerence-site-reliability-engineering-team-lead-principal-sre","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/cerence-site-reliability-engineering-team-lead-principal-sre.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-11T19:39:53Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":38183,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-12T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":178070},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=178070"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcerence-site-reliability-engineering-team-lead-principal-sre"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcerence-site-reliability-engineering-team-lead-principal-sre"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcerence-site-reliability-engineering-team-lead-principal-sre"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/cerence-site-reliability-engineering-team-lead-principal-sre\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcerence-site-reliability-engineering-team-lead-principal-sre"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":1006885}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"cerence.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":1006885},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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