Principal Site Reliability Engineer

We are looking for a Principal SRE Engineer to work directly on our proprietary, in-house product in a fast-paced and dynamic environment Must-have requirements: 9 years commercial experience as SRE Engineer in full time position 1 year experience in Tech Lead position Computer Science (or similar) University Degree Accept working hours: 10:00 - 18:00 (in Central European Time) This is hands-on position. The Role We are looking for a Principal Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) / Platform Engineer / DevOps Engineer with deep expertise in Kubernetes to design, implement, and manage high-availability, scalable systems primarily on AWS EKS. In this role, you will leverage tools like Terraform, ArgoCD, and GitHub Actions to automate infrastructure and workflows while implementing progressive deployment practices (e.g., blue-green, canary, or feature flagging). This position requires someone who can troubleshoot complex systems, implement robust monitoring and guardrails for databases and applications, and maintain a focus on optimising performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency. Main Responsibilities Kubernetes Management & Troubleshooting: Design and manage Kubernetes clusters (AWS EKS) with a focus on networking, scalability, security, and reliability. Troubleshoot complex, cross-system issues involving Kubernetes, databases, networking, and cloud infrastructure. Implement and maintain guardrails to ensure consistent and secure operation of Kubernetes workloads. Infrastructure Design & Automation: Architect, build, and maintain highly available, fault-tolerant systems using AWS services. Use Terraform to define infrastructure as code, enabling scalable, repeatable, and secure deployments. Automate provisioning, configuration, and updates for cloud infrastructure with a focus on GitOps principles using ArgoCD and GitHub Actions. System Guardrails & Application Monitoring: Set up and enforce guardrails for databases, infrastructure, and applications, ensuring consistency and adherence to best practices. Implement robust application and infrastructure monitoring using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and potentially Datadog. Ensure proactive alerting and predictive monitoring to detect issues before they impact users. Progressive Deployment & CI/CD: Design and implement deployment strategies like blue-green deployments, canary releases, and feature-flag-based rollouts. Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines to streamline application delivery, testing, and deployment. Collaboration & Best Practices: Partner with development teams to embed reliability and security best practices into the application lifecycle. Drive a culture of operational excellence, ensuring teams build for reliability, scalability, and security from the ground up. Resilience & Continuous Improvement: Conduct post-incident reviews to identify root causes and prevent future incidents. Implement practices like chaos engineering to test and enhance system resilience. Networking & Security: Design and manage secure networking solutions, including AWS VPCs, Kubernetes networking, and firewalls. Ensure compliance with security best practices and industry standards. What We Look For in a Candidate Required Qualifications 9 years of related experience in software development, systems engineering, and/or networking Kubernetes Expertise: Deep hands-on experience managing Kubernetes clusters (AWS EKS or similar) with a focus on networking, scaling, and security. Strong troubleshooting skills across Kubernetes workloads, infrastructure, and networking. Infrastructure as Code & Automation: Expertise in Terraform for infrastructure as code. Proven experience with ArgoCD and GitHub Actions for GitOps workflows and CI/CD pipelines. Monitoring & Observability: Proficiency in Prometheus, Grafana, and incident management workflows. Experience implementing application-level monitoring and tracing to identify performance bottlenecks. Guardrails & System Security: Demonstrated ability to set up guardrails for databases, Kubernetes clusters, and applications to ensure reliable and secure operations. Cloud Expertise: Advanced knowledge of AWS services, including EKS, EC2, CloudWatch, Route53, Aurora, and S3. Familiarity with auto-scaling, load balancing, and cloud cost optimisation. Programming & Scripting Skills: Strong proficiency in Python, Go, or Bash for scripting and automation tasks. Systems Troubleshooting: Proven ability to troubleshoot complex, distributed systems across cloud infrastructure, databases, and networking. Preferred Qualifications Experience with other cloud platforms such as GCP or Azure. Familiarity with logging and observability tools like ELK, Loki, or Graylog. Exposure to chaos engineering and resilience testing. Knowledge of HashiCorp Vault, SOPS, and secrets management best practices. Expertise in database systems, including setup, scaling, and optimisation. Strong listening and communication skills. Strong coaching and mentorship capabilities.