The RoleAs a Principal Site Reliability Engineer at Gradial, you will shape the foundation our platform runs on as we scale. You will work closely with the CTO and engineering team to make our systems faster, more resilient, and easier to operate in a high-growth environment. This is a hands-on IC leadership role for someone who wants real ownership, high leverage, and the chance to define how reliability looks at an AI-native company.
What You'll Own- Own the reliability, scalability, and operational health of Gradial's production platform.
- Lead the evolution of Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability, and infrastructure as code across the stack.
- Set the standard for how we design, ship, and operate reliable systems.
- Build the tooling and automation that help engineers move faster with more confidence.
- Drive improvements in monitoring, alerting, incident response, and service readiness.
- Partner with engineering to spot scaling risks early and solve them before they slow us down.
- Influence the long-term direction of our platform across reliability, security, performance, and cost.
What We're Looking For- 5+ years of experience in SRE, DevOps, platform engineering, or infrastructure roles with direct ownership of production systems.
- Proven success designing and operating production-grade infrastructure in fast-moving, high-growth environments.
- Deep expertise in Kubernetes, cloud-native architecture, and container orchestration.
- Strong experience with infrastructure as code, GitOps, CI/CD workflows, and modern deployment practices.
- Strong command of observability and reliability fundamentals across metrics, logging, tracing, alerting, and incident response.
- A track record of leading through influence, making sound technical decisions, and raising the bar across engineering teams.
Nice to Have- Familiarity with AI or ML infrastructure, including GPU provisioning, model deployment, or compute-intensive workloads.
- Experience supporting cloud or multi-cloud environments with a focus on resilience and scale.
- Comfort with TypeScript or Python for internal tooling and operational automation.
The salary range for this position is
$180,000 - $240,000 annually. Final compensation will be determined based on factors such as experience, skills, and qualifications. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for performance-based bonuses and equity awards. Gradial offers a comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental & vision insurance, 401K retirement plan, paid time off, paid sick leave and other employee wellness programs.
You'll thrive here if you...- Embrace AI as a core tool for problem-solving, creativity and scale.
- Show a strong work ethic, high ownership and bias toward action.
- Communicate with clarity and curiosity.
- Thrive in fast-paced, hyper-growth environments; where building is always better than maintaining the status quo.
What we offer- Meaningful equity and competitive salary
- Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage
- Fast-paced environment with autonomy and ownership
- Real impact, zero bureaucracy
- A front-row seat to building category-defining AI infrastructure
AI Literacy & Interviewing ToolsAs an AI-first company, we prioritize AI literacy as a core competency in our hiring decisions. We're excited by candidates who thoughtfully apply AI tools in their work, but during interviews we're focused on you. This is your opportunity to show how you think, communicate, and solve problems. Over-reliance on AI-generated responses during the interview process (especially when it obscures your own voice) will result in disqualification. We want to understand your unique perspective and how you approach challenges, both with and without AI.
