About the Role

Join RISC Zero as our inaugural Senior Site Reliability Engineer to shape the future of Bonsai and integrate cutting-edge blockchain technologies. Ideal for those passionate about startup culture, this role demands dynamic communication, a proactive mindset, and a hands-on approach to ensure system reliability and efficiency. You will be a cornerstone of our engineering team, driving innovation and excellence.

The mission of this role is to transform the Bonsai platform from Alpha to a production-ready state. As the Senior SRE, your mission is to lay the technological and operational foundations, ensuring Bonsai's seamless integration with blockchain technologies and readiness for exclusive launches.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and manage scalable, reliable infrastructure following SRE best practices.

• Implement and oversee monitoring and logging tools to ensure service performance and health.

• Achieve and maintain Service Level Objectives and Indicators, managing error budgets effectively.

• Enhance system resilience by eliminating single failure points and applying best practices.

• Collaborate with developers to integrate reliability into applications from inception.

• Automate incident response to minimize disruptions and improve efficiency.

• Participate in on-call rotations, leading by example in blameless post-mortems and continuous learning.

• Leverage cloud technology and Infrastructure as Code for consistent, scalable deployments.

• Promote best practices in reliability, security, and maintenance within the team.

Top Initiatives You’ll Own  (over the first 3-6 months)

• Develop and implement robust SRE practices for successful partner launches, focusing on system readiness and performance.

• Establish critical links between Bonsai and major blockchain networks, enhancing customer experiences and service capabilities.

• Oversee and optimize a GPU cluster dedicated to zero-knowledge (zk) workloads, ensuring peak performance and reliability.

• Guarantee consistent and reliable data flow from blockchain networks and web services, supporting system integrity and user needs.

• Ensure accurate and accessible data storage on the blockchain and other platforms, maintaining high data integrity and availability.

• Lead the development and management of infrastructure as Bonsai potentially transitions to a decentralized network, supporting scalability and future expansion.

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years in SRE, DevOps, or Cloud Engineering.

• Expertise in SRE principles, error budget management, and service level metrics.

• Proficiency in AWS services, orchestration, and cloud computing.

• Strong skills in Infrastructure as Code, preferably with Pulumi (Terraform is also beneficial).

• Experienced in monitoring tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana) and CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions).

• Solid background in Linux environments and scripting.

• Understanding of decentralized architectures and distributed systems.

Ideal Qualities

• Authenticity: Demonstrates ethical leadership, honesty, and transparency in all interactions.

• 💖 Empathy: Shows understanding and concern for the well-being of team members, demonstrating a humane orientation to leadership.

• 🌟 Resilience: Demonstrates positivity and resilience in the face of challenges, providing inspiration and motivation to the team.

• 🌱 Growth Mindset: Encourages continuous learning and personal development within the team, focusing on the human dynamic and the unique needs and strengths of all stakeholders.

• 🎯 Strategic Thinking: Exhibits the ability to think strategically and act decisively, balancing immediate needs with long-term goals.

• 🌍 Inclusive Leadership: Champions diversity and inclusion, promoting equitable opportunities and treatment for all team members.

• 🤝 Collaborative: Excels at breaking down silos and creating a "one team, one roadmap" culture. Has a strong ability to facilitate productive relationships across teams.

• 👷‍♀️Builder: You’re a Creator and a Doer, you get the vision, create the strategy, and take ownership of building it.

What We Offer

• Salary: Competitive range of $231,600 - $282,000.

• Professional Development: Access to leadership coaching and numerous learning opportunities.

• Work Flexibility: Remote work with up to 20% travel for team meetings and events, plus a Seattle co-working space.

• Health Insurance: Comprehensive coverage with United Health Care Choice Plus, including significant premium contributions.

• Retirement Plan: 401k to support your future.

• Equity: Generous company equity through Profit Incentive units (PIUs), vesting monthly.

• Vacation: Unlimited PTO, with 3-5 weeks standard.

• Holidays: 11 paid holidays for rest and rejuvenation.

• Culture: A supportive, collaborative, and inclusive work environment.

About Us

We're on a mission to transform the internet for the better. Our team of innovative hackers, visionary futurists, and passionate nerds is devoted to creating a digital space that's safe, inclusive, and empowers everyone. By developing the world's first zero-knowledge virtual machine, we've laid the groundwork for running arbitrary code as a zero-knowledge proof. Utilizing a ZK Coprocessor to assist or enhance the compute of an on-chain application, we have created a unique package - the RISC Zero ZK Coprocessor, comprised of the zkVM, Bonsai, and ETH Relay. Now, we're ambitiously constructing an entire ecosystem around this groundbreaking technology.

To ensure effective collaboration and seamless communication across our global team, all candidates must be available to overlap with the Pacific Standard Time (PST) zone for at least 3 hours during regular business hours. This requirement is essential for maintaining efficient workflow, participating in team meetings, and facilitating timely responses to customer inquiries and internal requests.