Why you:Customer-facing SRE role designing, operating, and supporting reliable, observable, and cost-effective platforms across Linux, Kubernetes, and public cloud. You'll manage workstreams, automate with IaC, improve SLOs/SLIs and alert hygiene, and support peers.
Data Platforms expectation: bring depth in
one area and the responsibility/willingness to
ramp on the others in 60-90 days:
Elasticsearch/OpenSearchRedis (OSS/Enterprise; ElastiCache/Memorystore/Azure Cache)
Kafka-Hadoop-Spark (incl. Confluent/MSK/Event Hubs, Cloudera/CDP/Dataproc/EMR)
What you will be doing: - Improve reliability, availability, and visibility for customer platforms; plan/execute documented maintenance; drive remediation/automation.
- Provide remote support for Linux-based infrastructure across data center and cloud environments.
- Manage the full OS lifecycle, including installation, deployment (Kickstart, VMs, containers, bare metal), patching, and upgrades.
- Design and implement automation for infrastructure deployment, configuration, and operations using scripting (Bash, Pythian) and tools (Ansible).
- Implement and evolve SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, capacity plans, and reliability reviews; harden observability (metrics/logs/traces) and keep alerts actionable.
- Build and extend infrastructure as code (Terraform/CloudFormation), configuration management (Ansible/Puppet/Chef/Salt), and GitOps (Helm, Argo CD/Flux) pipelines.
- Collaborate with support/app/data teams; reduce toil via scripting (Bash/Python) and small tools.
- Data Platforms - pick one at depth, ramp on others:
- Elasticsearch/OpenSearch: cluster ops, shard/replica strategy, ILM/snapshots, performance/security, EFK integration.
- Redis: cluster/Sentinel ops, failover drills, parameter tuning (maxmemory, timeouts), cache observability (hit ratio/latency/evictions), persistence/DR (RDB/AOF, snapshots).
- Kafka-Hadoop-Spark: topic/ACL management, retention/partitioning, connector basics, rolling upgrades; pipeline observability (lag/throughput/error rates); routine automation.
- Facilitate technical discussions with customers; advise on platform roadmaps and architecture trade-offs.
- Support and cross-train teammates; uphold documentation quality and internal knowledge sharing.
- Participate in on-call, escalations, and change reviews; proactively reduce toil via scripting/automation.
What we need from you:Core- Strong Linux administration/troubleshooting; Kubernetes fundamentals (workloads, networking, storage, upgrades, security, HA); one major cloud (GCP/AWS/Azure).
- IaC + config management experience; CI/CD/GitOps familiarity; scripting with Bash and/or Python.
- Consulting mindset: clear English (written/spoken), estimation, stakeholder communication, documentation quality.
Data Platforms (depth in one; ramp on others)- Elasticsearch/OpenSearch (ops, tuning, ILM/snapshots, security/EFK), or
- Redis (OSS/managed operations; data structures, eviction policies, RDB/AOF persistence).
- Kafka-Hadoop-Spark (production exposure; Confluent/MSK/Strimzi; Dataproc/EMR/CDP familiarity), or
Nice to have- Security/IAM basics, budget/capacity awareness; Prometheus/Grafana experience; diagramming/runbook excellence.
What you will receive: - Love your career: Competitive total rewards package. Blog during work hours; take a day off and volunteer for your favorite charity.
- Love your work/life balance: Flexibly work remotely from your home, there's no daily travel requirement to an office! All you need is a stable internet connection.
- Love your coworkers: Collaborate with some of the best and brightest in the industry!
- Love your development: Hone your skills or learn new ones with our substantial training allowance; participate in professional development days, attend training, become certified, whatever you like!
- Love your workspace: We give you all the equipment you need to work from home including a laptop with your choice of OS, and an annual budget to personalize your work environment!
- Love yourself: Pythian cares about the health and well-being of our team. You will have an annual wellness budget to make yourself a priority (use it on gym memberships, massages, fitness and more). Additionally, you will receive a generous amount of paid vacation and sick days, as well as a day off to volunteer for your favorite charity.
The pay range for this role is:
80,000 - 90,000 USD per year (Remote (United States))
