5-7 years of experience in site reliability engineering or a related field
Strong understanding of systems architecture including schedulers, containers, networking, storage, and hardware
Ability to manage high-pressure situations and take ownership of system reliability
Valuable experience with observability tools and operational standards
Familiarity with modern tech stacks, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Python, though flexibility is encouraged
Responsibilities
Ensure efficient access to compute resources for researchers
Provide transparency into resource utilization and health of clusters
Facilitate automatic scaling of resources in response to demand
Manage access permissions to guarantee appropriate resource allocation
Drive reproducibility in research environments through deterministic deployments
Automate processes to enhance operational efficiency
Benefits
Opportunities to work at the intersection of neuroscience and AI
Autonomy in adapting infrastructure to meet diverse research needs
Access to cutting-edge computational resources
Collaborative culture with a focus on creativity and innovation
Potential for professional growth in a startup-like environment
Full Job Description
Position Summary
We are looking for a Site Reliability Engineer to own the digital infrastructure that powers our research.
This includes compute resources that we rent from third parties, container registries, and dashboards. The main objective is to make sharing these resources easy and efficient, ensuring the infrastructure is reliable and accessible to the right people.
This role spans a broad spectrum of activities:
Compute Access: Ensure easy and efficient access to compute resources for our researchers.
Resource Visibility: Provide clear visibility into resource utilization and cluster health.
Auto-Scaling: Enable automatic scaling of compute resources based on demand.
Access Management: Ensure the right people have access to the right resources.
Reproducibility: Drive towards deterministic deployments and reproducible research environments.
Process Automation: Automate operational processes where it makes sense to increase efficiency.
Current stack: Ansible, Kubernetes, Docker, Tailscale, Python, Grafana, Prometheus, and Talos Linux. We're not religious about any of it.
Qualifications
Ownership: You are comfortable being the person accountable when the cluster is unhealthy or capacity is tight.
Systems Intuition: You understand how schedulers, containers, networking, storage, and hardware interact. You can reason about failure modes and design systems that degrade predictably.
Operational Rigor: You value observability, reproducibility, and clear operational boundaries. You leave systems in a state that other engineers can understand, operate, and debug without you.
Pragmatism: You can support experimental research workloads without forcing everything into a rigid "production" mold. You know when to stabilize and when to allow controlled chaos to speed up discovery.
Location & Visa
This role is in-person in Emeryville, CA.
Visa sponsorship may be available for qualified candidates.
