SENIOR LEAD SITE RELIABILITY & SYSTEMS ENGINEER
Platform Engineering | Infrastructure, Reliability & Systems Architecture
ABOUT THE ROLE
We are seeking a Senior Lead Site Reliability & Systems Engineer — a versatile technical leader who combines deep SRE expertise with broad systems engineering capability. In this hybrid role you will drive platform reliability, operational excellence, and systems architecture across our infrastructure, ensuring our products are scalable, resilient, and delivered with high velocity. You will partner with engineering, product, and operations teams to embed reliability and sound systems design at every layer of the stack.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Reliability Engineering & Incident Management
Define and drive the SRE strategy, roadmap, and standards across engineering teams
Establish and enforce SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets across all production services
Own the incident management lifecycle — detection, response, resolution, and prevention
Lead blameless postmortems and translate findings into lasting systemic improvements
Manage on-call rotations and aggressively reduce toil through automation
Systems Architecture & Design
Lead the design and evolution of large-scale, distributed systems and platform infrastructure
Define technical standards, architectural patterns, and engineering best practices org-wide
Evaluate and recommend technologies and tooling aligned to business and reliability requirements
Conduct architecture reviews and provide guidance on complex technical trade-offs
Lead capacity planning, performance engineering, and infrastructure scaling strategies
Platform & Infrastructure
Build and maintain highly available, fault-tolerant infrastructure on cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)
Drive infrastructure-as-code adoption (Terraform) and enforce best practices
Architect and implement observability platforms — metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting
Build and improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and release engineering workflows
Lead chaos engineering and game day exercises to validate system resilience
Champion automation across provisioning, testing, deployment, and monitoring workflows
Leadership, Mentorship & Collaboration
Mentor and grow a team of SREs, platform engineers, and systems engineers
Partner with DevOps, security, and product teams to align on shared platform goals
Serve as the technical escalation point for critical infrastructure incidents and outages
Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders and leadership
Contribute to build vs. buy evaluations and drive strategic vendor assessments
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
8+ years of experience in SRE, systems engineering, platform engineering, or DevOps roles
3+ years in a senior or lead capacity with ownership of large-scale, distributed systems
Deep expertise in at least one major cloud provider — AWS preferred
Strong proficiency in Python, Go, Bash, Java, or C++
Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, container orchestration, and service mesh technologies
Solid understanding of Linux/Unix internals, networking (TCP/IP, DNS, TLS/SSL, load balancing)
Proficiency with observability tooling: Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent
Proven track record defining and operating against SLOs and error budgets
Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools — Terraform required
Strong understanding of distributed systems design, security fundamentals, and data governance
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
Experience with service mesh (Istio, Linkerd) and API gateways (Kong, Apigee)
Background in systems integration across enterprise middleware, ERP, or CRM platforms
Familiarity with FinOps practices and cloud cost optimization
Experience in regulated industries: financial services, automotive, healthcare, or government
Familiarity with compliance frameworks: SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIST
Track record of leading migrations — legacy-to-cloud or monolith-to-microservices
Relevant certifications: AWS Solutions Architect, CKA/CKAD, GCP Professional, or Red Hat RHCA
WHAT WE OFFER
Compensation & Benefits
Competitive base salary + annual bonus
Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
401(k) with company match
Generous PTO and paid parental leave
Culture & Growth
Flexible hybrid work model
Learning & development budget (conferences, certs, courses)
Engineering-first culture with direct product impact
Collaborative teams and transparent leadership
Drug Testing:
To be employed in this role, you'll need to clear a pre-employment drug test. Cox Automotive does not currently administer a pre-employment drug test for marijuana for this position. However, we are a drug-free workplace, so the possession, use or being under the influence of drugs illegal under federal or state law during work hours, on company property and/or in company vehicles is prohibited.
Compensation:
Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $163,400.00 - $272,300.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.
Benefits:
The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company’s needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.
EOE, including disability/vets
