Site Reliability Engineering Team Lead – Principal SRE

Cerence Inc.

. Lead Cerence's Site Reliability Engineering team and own the reliability, availability, and operational health of its cloud-native automotive AI platform .

Posted 9/17/2026full-timeRemote • Canada, United StatesSeniorWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in Site Reliability Engineering, leading teams to ensure the reliability and operational health of cloud-native platforms. Proficient in implementing SLI/SLO/SLA frameworks, CI/CD automation, and observability practices while effectively communicating with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Site Reliability Engineering LeadershipCloud Platform Experience (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud)Container Orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker, Istio)CI/CD Automation (Terraform, Flux)Observability Tooling (Zabbix, Prometheus, Grafana)

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Hard Skills

Site Reliability EngineeringCloud Platform ManagementContainer OrchestrationCI/CD Pipeline DevelopmentScripting (Python, Go, Shell)UNIX/Linux System ConfigurationHigh-Availability Service DesignLog Aggregation and AnalyticsInfrastructure-as-Code PracticesPerformance Debugging

Soft Skills

Excellent Communication SkillsTeam LeadershipMentoringCollaborationProblem-Solving

Tools & Technologies

KubernetesDockerAzureAWSGoogle CloudZabbixPrometheusGrafanaTerraformJira

Industry Keywords

AutomotiveEmbedded SystemsLatency-Sensitive EnvironmentsITSMProject Management

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSAzureCloudDNSDockerFluxGrafanaITSMKubernetesLinuxPrometheusPythonSDLCTerraformUnixGo

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Lead Cerence's Site Reliability Engineering team and own the reliability, availability, and operational health of its cloud-native automotive AI platform
Help select, mentor, and technically develop the team across multiple locations
Set technical direction and priorities and contribute performance and growth input to team managers
Design and maintain a sustainable on-call rotation and monitor page load and team health
Own and drive the reliability roadmap across a 2–3 quarter horizon
Define and govern SLI/SLO/SLA frameworks for customer program availability targets up to 99.95%
Serve as Tier 2 technical escalation point for major incidents in partnership with the Global Operations Center
Champion blameless postmortem culture and ensure actionable outcomes
Lead and improve Production Readiness / NFR reviews with development teams
Contribute to root cause analysis and own systemic improvements
Approve high-risk and out-of-window production changes
Set strategic direction for metrics, dashboards, alerting, escalation, and automation
Drive CI/CD automation pipelines for service deployments, rollbacks, and operational tasks
Partner with DevOps and platform teams to evolve shared infrastructure
Embed reliability into the SDLC through collaboration with development managers and architects
Participate in service reliability consulting and architectural reviews
Communicate reliability posture and risk to technical and non-technical stakeholders

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years of hands-on experience in site reliability, DevOps, or cloud platform roles, including time leading a team or owning a function
A track record of setting technical direction and holding standards across a team — with or without formal authority
Hands-on experience with container orchestration frameworks (Kubernetes, Docker, Istio)
Experience with public cloud platforms (Azure primarily; AWS and Google Cloud)
Familiarity with observability tooling — metrics pipelines, dashboarding, and alerting (e.g., Zabbix, Prometheus, Grafana)
Experience with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code practices (e.g., Terraform, Flux)
Proficiency in at least one scripting or programming language (Python, Go, Shell, etc.)
Strong UNIX/Linux background, including system configuration, performance debugging, and network fundamentals (Layer 4/5, DNS, HTTP/S, TLS)
Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English
Previous site reliability leadership experience
Experience leading distributed or multi-site technical teams
Background in high-availability service design (redundancy, failover, blast radius)
Experience with log aggregation and analytics platforms (Loki, Thanos)
Familiarity with ITSM and project tooling (Jira, Confluence)
Experience in automotive, embedded, or latency-sensitive production environments

Benefits

Comp & perks

Annual bonus opportunity
Insurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability)
Paid time off
Paid holidays
Company contribution to the RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan)
Equity awards for certain positions and levels
Remote and/or hybrid work available depending on the position