Site Reliability Engineer II (For independent contractors)

Site Reliability Engineer II (aka SRE II) are specialists in treating operations as a software problem. They focus on reliability of systems and services - addressing availability, performance, scalability, latency, observability, efficiency. They work on maintaining key components and developing systems that will minimize human labor (through automation) and increase system reliability with the end goal of breaking the relationship between system size, operational toil and complexity.

SRE II are responsible for the implementation of technical solutions based on business requirements, they can estimate the effort and impact of the items they work on, and show a high quality of craft in what they deliver. SRE II work primarily within the scope of their team while occasionally collaborating across partner teams. They are expected to work together with colleagues (potentially in other job roles) to design and implement technical tasks. They are also expected to actively participate in incident response for issues affecting their team. Because the required technical skills and commercial knowledge can vary from one area to another, SRE II can wear several hats; part of a business service owner team, owner of a piece of infrastructure, and/or consultant to product development teams regarding Site Reliability Engineering related scope.

Key Responsibilities

• Building Software ApplicationsIs responsible to build software applications by using relevant development languages and applying knowledge of systems, services and tools appropriate for the business areaIs responsible to refactor and simplify code by introducing design patterns when necessary
• Is responsible to ensure the quality of the application by following standard testing techniques and methods that adhere to the test strategy.
• Has sufficient knowledge to write readable and reusable code by applying standard patterns and using standard librariesHas sufficient knowledge to maintain data security, integrity and quality by effectively following company standards and best practices
• Software Systems DesignHas sufficient knowledge to evaluate possible architecture solutions by taking into account cost, business requirements, technology requirements and emerging technologies
• Has sufficient knowledge to describe the implications of changing an existing system or adding a new system to a specific area, by having a broad, high-level understanding of the infrastructure and architecture of our systemsHas sufficient knowledge to help grow the business and/or accelerate software development by applying engineering techniques (e.g. prototyping, spiking and vendor evaluation) and standards
• Has sufficient knowledge to meet business needs by designing solutions that meet current requirements and are adaptable for future enhancements
• End to End System OwnershipHas sufficient knowledge to own a service end to end by actively monitoring application health and performance, setting and monitoring relevant metrics and act accordingly when violated
• Has sufficient knowledge to reduce business continuity risks and bus factor by applying state-of-the-art practices and tools, and writing the appropriate documentation such as runbooks and OpDocs
• Has sufficient knowledge to reduce risk and obtain customer feedback by using continuous delivery and experimentation frameworksIs responsible to independently manage an application or service by working through deployment and operations in productionHas sufficient knowledge to maintain data security, integrity and quality by effectively following company standards and best practises
• Technical Incident ManagementHas sufficient knowledge to address and resolve live production issues by mitigating the customer impact within SLAHas sufficient knowledge to improve the overall reliability of systems by producing long term solutions through root cause analysisHas sufficient knowledge to keep track of incidents by contributing to postmortem processes and logging live issues
• Automation and toil reductionHas sufficient knowledge to ensure that infrastructure stays current by reducing technical debt, searching for bottlenecks and preparing for scaling
• Has sufficient knowledge to reduce cost of operations and maintenance by leveraging new technologies, automation, and partner with vendors to ensure we stay current
• Has sufficient knowledge to reduce human labour by writing small software features that address availability, scalability, latency and efficiency
• Monitoring and Alerting improvements. Has sufficient knowledge to review and verify performance of production systems and network infrastructure by continuously monitoring appropriate observability metrics, business KPIs and capacity planning.Has sufficient knowledge to improve application reliability by partnering with development teams to advise on setting appropriate observability metrics
• Critical Thinking Is responsible to systematically identify patterns and underlying issues in complex situations, and to find solutions by applying logical and analytical thinking.Is responsible to constructively evaluate and develop ideas, plans and solutions by reviewing them, objectively taking into account external knowledge, initiating 'SMART' improvements and articulating their rationale.
• Continuous Quality and Process Improvement. Has sufficient knowledge to identify opportunities for process, system and structural improvements (i.e performance gains) by examining and evaluating current process flows, methods and standards. Has sufficient knowledge to design and implement relevant improvements by defining adapted/new process flows, standards, and practices that enable business performance.
• Effective Communication Has sufficient knowledge to deliver clear, well-structured, and meaningful information to a target audience by using suitable communication mediums and language tailored to the audience.Has sufficient knowledge to achieve mutually agreeable solutions by staying adaptable, communicating ideas in clear coherent language and practising active listening. Has sufficient knowledge to ask relevant (follow-up) questions to properly engage with the speaker and really understand what they are saying, by applying listening and reflection techniques
• Architectural Guidance Has sufficient knowledge to advise product teams towards a technical solution that meets the functional, nonfunctional & architectural requirements by challenging the rationale for an application design and providing context in the wider architectural landscape. Has basic knowledge to set a clear direction for a technical capability by evaluating and aligning the target architecture improvements, reframing architectural designs and decisions for varied stakeholder

Communication

• Track Members
• Product Stakeholders
• Peers

Communication type

• Cooperation - Information
• Cooperation - Persuasion
• Cooperation - Information

Level of Education Bachelor degree

Years of relevant Job Knowledge Broad Job Knowledge (3 - 5 years)

Requirements Of Special Knowledge/skills

• Building Software Applications
• Software System Design
• End to End System Ownership
• Technical Incident Management
• Operations (Automation & Toil)
• Observability (Monitoring & Alerting)
• Critical Thinking
• Continuous Quality & Process Improvement
• Effective Communication
• Architectural Guidance