Tech Lead, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

As a Tech Lead, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) at Edge & Node, your primary responsibilities include leading the SRE team in managing incident response, driving service reliability and performance improvements, and architecting core infrastructure with an emphasis on fault tolerance. You're expected to collaborate closely with engineering teams, influence technical decisions, and support other SREs in their professional development.

To qualify for the Tech Lead, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) position at Edge & Node, candidates should have proven experience as a senior SRE or DevOps engineer, along with strong technical leadership skills. Knowledge of the SRE/devOps domain, cloud infrastructure (especially Google Cloud Platform), observability tools, and a solid understanding of infrastructure as code is essential. Experience in web3 or blockchain technologies is beneficial but not mandatory.

A typical day for a Tech Lead, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) at Edge & Node consists of a mix of hands-on technical contributions, daily stand-ups with the SRE team, incident management, and strategic planning with product leadership. You’ll also focus on mentoring your team, driving initiatives for improving service delivery, and engaging in cross-team collaboration to challenge existing assumptions and improve infrastructure.

The Tech Lead, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) at Edge & Node plays a vital role in ensuring the reliability and performance of our decentralized protocols and applications. By leading teams to implement best practices and architect resilient infrastructure, you directly contribute to Edge & Node's mission of building The Graph, which is essential for navigating the future of decentralized knowledge and information access.

While experience in web3 or blockchain is a plus for the Tech Lead, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) role at Edge & Node, it is not strictly necessary. What’s most important is proven experience in SRE or DevOps practices, technical leadership skills, and expertise in relevant tools and technologies. However, an interest in the decentralized ecosystem will certainly enhance your impact in this role.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) combines software engineering principles with IT operations to create scalable and reliable software systems. Unlike traditional DevOps, which focuses more broadly on collaboration between development and operations teams, SRE emphasizes quantifiable metrics for service reliability, such as SLAs and error budgets, aiming to improve both the performance and the reliability of services.

To improve system reliability and availability, I would start by implementing comprehensive monitoring solutions to track key performance indicators. Establishing automated incident response procedures, conducting post-mortems for self-healing systems, and enforcing SLAs can greatly enhance communication around reliability. Additionally, regularly reviewing architecture and implementing redundancy measures can mitigate single points of failure.

In handling incidents, my approach begins with effective communication to stakeholders, followed by triaging the issue to restore service as quickly as possible. After resolution, I conduct a thorough root cause analysis to identify the underlying factors, followed by documenting the findings and determining corrective actions to prevent recurrence. A blameless retrospective helps facilitate learning and bolstering team resilience.

I have extensive experience with tools such as Terraform for infrastructure as code, Kubernetes for orchestration, and various CI/CD tools for automation. Additionally, I am skilled in monitoring and alerting solutions like Grafana and Prometheus, which aid in observability and incident response. Mastery of cloud services, particularly Google Cloud Platform, is also part of my technical toolkit.

In a previous role, I led a project that involved re-architecting our core microservices for improved load balancing and failover capabilities. By leveraging containerization and optimizing deployment processes, we were able to reduce downtime by 40% and increase system responsiveness, resulting in enhanced user experience and satisfaction.

Encouraging a culture of continuous learning within the SRE team at Edge & Node involves creating an environment that supports knowledge sharing, mentorship, and frequent retrospectives. Initiatives like lunch-and-learns, encouraging team members to pursue professional certifications, and fostering discussions around emerging technologies will empower the SRE team to grow together.

I have significant experience with various cloud platforms, particularly Google Cloud Platform, where I've managed large-scale deployments and utilized services such as Kubernetes Engine and Cloud Monitoring. My preference for GCP is due to its robust features and integrations, but I'm also adept with AWS and Azure as needed for specific project requirements.

I stay updated with industry trends and best practices in SRE by actively following thought leaders in the field on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, participating in webinars, and attending conferences. Additionally, I am part of online communities and forums where I can engage in discussions and learn from peers about the latest in site reliability practices.

To ensure security in a site reliability context, I would integrate security practices into our development life cycle, ensuring regular vulnerability assessments and applying security patches promptly. Building a culture of security awareness within the SRE team and collaborating with security specialists promote a holistic approach to safeguarding our infrastructure.

In my last role, we faced a significant latency issue that threatened our service uptime. By conducting performance profiling, we identified suboptimal database queries as the culprit. I spearheaded a series of optimizations that involved indexing and restructuring queries, ultimately reducing response times by 60% and improving overall system performance.