SRE Manager (VPN)

Join Proton and build a better internet where privacy is the default

Proton was founded in 2014 by scientists from CERN on a simple truth: privacy is a fundamental human right. Since then, we’ve built the world’s largest encrypted email service (Proton Mail) and expanded into Proton VPN, Proton Drive, Proton Pass, and Proton Calendar-tools used by millions globally to protect their freedom, fight censorship, and keep their data safe. In some situations, Proton has literally helped save lives!

We are profitable, independent (no VC control), and selectively hire from the top ~1% of applicants. Our 700+ team members across 50+ countries come from leading organizations and elite academic backgrounds. We move fast, keep hierarchy light, and prioritize impact over optics. If you want to do meaningful work with exceptionally high-caliber people, this is it. Join us and do work you can truly be proud of. Check our open-source projects here!

The Team:

Proton VPN gives millions of people a private connection to the internet, including people in countries where the internet is censored. It runs on thousands of bare-metal servers. We choose the hardware, the datacenters, and the networks ourselves, and we operate all of them.

The VPN Site Reliability Engineering team builds and runs this fleet. It has eight engineers: six site reliability engineers and two engineers who look after day-to-day fleet health. The fleet runs Debian, is automated with Ansible and Python, and is monitored with Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics, and Grafana. The team has kept the service stable through several years of fast growth.

The role:

We are hiring an engineering manager to lead this team. You will report to the VPN Engineering Director and work from our Geneva or Barcelona office.

The fleet keeps growing as more people use Proton VPN. To stay ahead of that growth, the team is investing in two areas, and you will lead both.

1. Automation. Engineers still do much of the provisioning, deployment, and repair work by hand. We want software to do that work, so that a fix or a new location reaches the fleet quickly and safely.

2. Observability. We know when a server is down. We do not yet know when users in one country are getting poor throughput. We want to find a problem that affects one server or one country while it is still small.

We chose a simple stack on purpose, and we plan to keep it and extend it.

This is a management role, so you will not write production code. You do need to be technical enough to read the team's code, question its designs, and examine its postmortems in detail.

What you will do:

• Manage and develop a team of eight engineers.
• Decide what the team automates and measures first, and deliver that plan.
• Own the reliability of the Proton VPN fleet, including SLOs, error budgets, incident response, and postmortems.
• Build monitoring that shows what users experience in each country, starting with throughput.
• Replace manual provisioning, deployment, and repair work with tooling that ships changes to the fleet quickly and safely.
• Set the engineering standards for the team, and coach engineers to solve operational problems with software.
• Plan capacity and new locations with VPN product engineering, Proton's infrastructure teams, and our network and datacenter providers.

What we are looking for:

• Several years of experience managing site reliability, infrastructure, or platform teams.
• Experience leading a team from manual operations to automated ones, with results you can describe.
• Strong technical judgment on large Linux fleets. You can review a design, read Python and Ansible, and find the gaps in a postmortem.
• Experience owning the reliability of a production service, including SLOs, error budgets, incident response, and postmortems.
• Experience building or rebuilding the monitoring of a production service, and getting engineers to rely on it.
• Experience running physical infrastructure, or a clear willingness to learn it.
• Experience developing engineers, giving direct feedback, and addressing underperformance.
• Experience delivering projects that depend on teams outside your own.
• The habit of setting your own priorities. We will give you goals, and you will decide with the team how to reach them.
• Clear writing in strategy documents, incident reports, and engineering standards.
• A commitment to privacy. Proton VPN keeps no logs of user activity, and you will have to improve observability within that limit.
• Proton is an office-first company. We expect you to spend most of your time in the office, and while we do offer some flexibility to work from home, we believe in-person collaboration helps us build the best products.

Bonus points for:

• Deep networking knowledge: routing, peering, tunnelling protocols such as WireGuard and OpenVPN, and packet-level debugging.
• Experience with censorship circumvention, or with running infrastructure in restricted network environments.
• Experience operating a fleet across many countries, including the vendor and legal work involved.
• A background as a software engineer, in Python or another language.

What We Offer

• Work that Matters: millions of people trust Proton with their privacy. We answer only to our users - not advertisers, not investors with conflicting agendas, not governments. The work you do here is real, and the impact is measurable. (read more about our impact here)
• Stock Options: at Proton, we all have the opportunity to be owners of the company. From day one, you have a real stake in what we're building. When Proton wins, you win.
• Technology: you'll get the right hardware and the right software you need to do your best work.
• Learning & Development: we invest in your growth because sharp people make us better. Proton is one of the fastest ways to accelerate your career because you'll be thrown into real challenges, with real ownership, from day one.
• Employee Benefits: your wellbeing isn't an afterthought. We offer strong health coverage, solid retirement options, generous leave, and wellness support so you can bring your best self to work every day
• Food: Lunch and snacks are on us every day in our offices so you can focus on the work and not on what's for lunch.
• Transport: getting to the office shouldn't cost you. We cover public transport, bike allowances, or parking, whichever works for you.
• Flexible Working: you own your schedule. Set hours that work for you and your team - because outcomes matter more than when the clock says you started.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

At Proton, we believe diversity drives innovation and strengthens our mission to provide privacy as a default for all. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where all individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical ability, or socio-economic background, feel valued and empowered. We strive to create equal opportunities, promote open dialogue, and support continuous learning to ensure every voice is heard and respected.

If you need any extra support or reasonable adjustments during the hiring process, please let your talent partner know.

Candidate Privacy Notice

When you apply for a position, refer a candidate, or are considered for a role at Proton Technologies AG (Proton, we, us, or our), your information is stored in Greenhouse, in accordance with their Service Privacy Policy.  This information is used to evaluate your suitability for the posted position. We also retain this information for consideration for future roles that you may apply for or that we believe may align with your background and skills.

If we no longer have a legitimate business need to process your information, we will either delete or anonymize it. Should you have any inquiries about how we use or manage your information, or if you wish to access, correct, or delete your data, please contact our privacy team at [email protected].

Proton does not accept unsolicited resumes from any sources other than directly from candidates. We will not pay a fee for any placement resulting from an unsolicited offer, even if the candidate is subsequently hired by Proton.

To learn more about our privacy policy, please visit our privacy policy page. 

Compensation range

Barcelona 62,000-95,000 euros gross annually*

Other locations: Compensation will be discussed during the interview process

*Final compensation will be determined based on the candidate's qualifications, skills, and previous experience

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