Principal SRE

Backblaze

. Own the availability and durability of critical services across production environments and accountability for outcomes .

Posted 10/19/2026full-timeRemote • United StatesLead💰 $215,000 - $250,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in site reliability engineering, focusing on service health metrics, incident response, and automation of operational tasks. Proficient in scripting and familiar with cloud platforms, storage systems, and ITIL practices to enhance system reliability and performance.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Site Reliability EngineeringIncident ResponseAutomation DesignCloud Platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)Scripting (Python, Bash, Go)

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Linux Systems AdministrationMonitoring and AlertingLoad Balancing ServicesStorage Systems KnowledgeKubernetes and DockerHashicorp Products (Nomad, Vault, Terraform)CI/CD PipelinesError Budget PoliciesService Level Indicators (SLIs)Service Level Objectives (SLOs)

Soft Skills

Problem-SolvingCollaborationLeadershipCommunicationWillingness to Learn

Tools & Technologies

PrometheusGrafanaCatchpointELKTerraformAnsibleJenkinsFireHydrantKubernetes/VitessMysqlsh

Industry Keywords

ITILOSSSaaSDistributed SystemsHyperscalers

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AnsibleAWSAzureCloudDistributed SystemsDockerGoogle Cloud PlatformGrafanaJenkinsKubernetesLinuxMicroservicesPrometheusPythonTerraformVaultGo

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own the availability and durability of critical services across production environments and accountability for outcomes
Drive projects from problem discovery through resolution
Advise on service health metrics using SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets; partner with service owners to define and iterate SLIs/SLOs and establish error budget policies and alerting
Participate in leadership on-call rotations, incident response, and post-incident reviews
Follow ITIL/OSS processes for incident, change, problem, and capacity management
Design automation for common operational tasks, reducing manual intervention and toil
Collaborate with engineering on storage design and performance expectations against product SLAs
Define monitoring, logging, and alerting frameworks using tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Catchpoint, and ELK; integrate runbooks with FireHydrant
Work with CI/CD pipelines, configuration management, and infrastructure as code tools including Terraform, Ansible, and Jenkins
Write Bash, Python, or Go scripts to improve system reliability and efficiency
Partner with engineering, customer success, product, and operations teams on resilient system design and operations
Work with customers to align stability prioritization with their needs and product experiences
Work with vendors and service providers to troubleshoot service issues and track SLA performance
Document systems, share learnings, and help grow a reliability-minded engineering culture
Lead cross-functional teams to identify observability and operations-process gaps and define prioritization strategy
Identify recurring issues, propose long-term improvements, and design action plans
Promote reliability-focused practices within development and operations teams

Requirements

What you’ll need

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
10+ years of experience in site reliability, systems engineering, or operations; experience with hyperscalers preferred
Exposure to large-scale, production-grade systems, including experience establishing operational procedures or runbooks and bringing others up to speed on them
Solid Linux systems administration and troubleshooting skills
Proven ability to leverage AI tools to improve platform stability and scalability
Knowledge of storage systems, performance, sharding and storage algorithms
Experience in load balancing services including IPVS
Security-minded operations (patching, hardening, identifying vulnerabilities)
Familiarity with service reliability concepts — monitoring, alerting, incident response, and root cause analysis
Proficiency in at least one scripting language (Python, Bash, or Go)
Experience working with containers (Kubernetes, Docker) and microservices concepts required; comfortable operating in a Kubernetes/Vitess-on-K8s environment (kubectl, mysqlsh, Vitess keyspaces)
Experience with Hashicorp products (Nomad, Vault, Terraform)
Experience in a SaaS, service provider, or distributed systems environment preferred
Familiarity with ITIL/OSS practices and SLO/SLA’s preferred
Strong problem-solving skills and willingness to learn new technologies preferred
Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) preferred

Benefits

Comp & perks

Healthcare for family, including dental and vision
Competitive compensation and 401K
RSU grants for full-time employees
ESPP program
Flexible vacation policy
Maternity & paternity leave
MacBook Pro to use for work, plus a generous stipend to personalize your workstation
Childcare bonus (human children only)
Fertility treatment and support
Learning & development program
Commuter benefits
Culture that supports a healthy work-life balance