Staff Site Reliability Engineer

Cisco

. Define and drive the technical roadmap for platform reliability, scalability, and operational excellence .

Posted 10/26/2026full-timeUnited StatesLead💰 $186,900 - $267,700 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in Site Reliability Engineering and Platform Engineering, focusing on cloud and on-prem deployment architectures. Proficient in designing scalable, resilient systems and driving automation for operational excellence.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Site Reliability EngineeringKubernetes Platform ManagementCloud Architecture (AWS, GCP)CI/CD Platform DesignInfrastructure as Code (Terraform)

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Python ProgrammingGo ProgrammingDistributed Systems DesignCapacity PlanningPerformance EngineeringMonitoring and AlertingOperational ReadinessIncident ManagementRoot Cause AnalysisMLOps

Soft Skills

Technical LeadershipMentoring EngineersCollaboration

Tools & Technologies

KubernetesTerraformAWSGCPCI/CD Tools

Industry Keywords

Operational ExcellenceDeployment AutomationScalabilityReliability Engineering StandardsSaaS Deployments

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudDistributed SystemsGoogle Cloud PlatformKubernetesPythonTerraformGo

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Define and drive the technical roadmap for platform reliability, scalability, and operational excellence
Lead the architecture and evolution of deployment platforms for cloud and air-gapped customer environments
Establish reliability engineering standards, including SLOs, operational readiness, capacity planning, and resiliency reviews
Lead reliability and scalability initiatives across Kubernetes, deployment infrastructure, databases, and networking
Drive automation to eliminate operational toil and improve engineering productivity
Design and build internal platforms, frameworks, and tooling for reliable operations at scale
Lead complex production incident response and drive systemic improvements through root cause analysis and long-term remediation
Partner with engineering leadership on platform architecture, deployment strategy, and production readiness
Mentor engineers through technical leadership, design reviews, and operational guidelines
Collaborate with customers and internal teams to build secure, scalable, and reliable cloud and on-prem deployment architectures

Requirements

What you’ll need

8+ years’ experience with a Bachelor's degree, or 6+ years with a Master's degree, or 3+ years with a PhD, or equivalent related experience
At least 6 years in Site Reliability Engineering, Platform / Cloud / Infrastructure Engineering, or related fields
5+ years operating large-scale Kubernetes platforms in production
Experience designing highly available, scalable, and resilient distributed systems
Experience with AWS, GCP, or other public cloud platforms
Strong experience designing CI/CD platforms and deployment automation at scale
Expertise in observability, monitoring, alerting, capacity planning, and performance engineering
Strong programming skills in Python and/or Go
Deep experience with Infrastructure as Code, such as Terraform
Strong understanding of networking, distributed systems, storage, databases, and cloud architecture
Experience operating both SaaS and enterprise/on-prem deployments
Demonstrated technical leadership across multiple engineering teams
Experience leading incident management, postmortems, and long-term reliability initiatives
Experience with MLOps preferred

Benefits

Comp & perks

Medical, dental and vision insurance
401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
Paid parental leave
Short- and long-term disability coverage
Basic life insurance
Cisco restricted stock unit grants may be available
10 paid holidays per full calendar year
1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
Paid employee birthday day off
Paid year-end holiday shutdown
4 paid days off for personal wellness
16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year for non-exempt employees
Flexible vacation time off program with no defined limit for eligible exempt employees
80 hours of sick time off provided on hire and each January 1st
Up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward
Additional paid time away for critical or emergency family issues
Optional 10 paid volunteer days per full calendar year
Annual bonuses for non-sales roles, subject to Cisco policies
Performance-based incentive pay for sales-plan employees