Helping companies hire and pay global teams effortlessly.

Human Resources
2019

Actively Hiring

AI Summary

Remote is seeking a Senior Site Reliability Engineer for its 'Remote Build' platform, which focuses on agentic AI integrations across HR and finance stacks. The role involves ensuring operational excellence and infrastructure strategy for a globally distributed system. Key responsibilities include infrastructure as code (Terraform, Kubernetes), observability, security compliance, performance optimization, and automation. The ideal candidate has senior-level SRE experience with deep Kubernetes and AWS knowledge, strong scripting skills, and excellent communication abilities. This fully remote position offers the opportunity to work on ambitious problems in a global, asynchronous culture.

Role DNA

Job Complexity

Easy Hard

Pace & Pressure

Relaxed Fast-paced

Autonomy Level

Guided Full Ownership

Communication Load

Independent Highly Collaborative

AI Insight Senior SRE roles involve complex systems, distributed architectures, and high-stakes reliability, but the scope is defined and supported by a team, placing difficulty at level 4.

Salary Analysis

AI Insight The offered salary range of $54,000-$150,000 has a median of $102,000, which is below the US market median for senior SRE roles (typically $120k-$200k). This may indicate a lower cost-of-living adjustment or a focus on equity and growth opportunities. Candidates should negotiate based on experience and market data.

Key Skills

Site Reliability Engineering Kubernetes AWS Terraform CI/CD Observability Scripting Automation Incident Response Infrastructure as Code

Cover Letter Sample

Dear Hiring Manager,

I am writing to express my strong interest in the Senior Site Reliability Engineer position at Remote. With extensive experience in building and operating large-scale distributed systems on AWS and Kubernetes, I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to Remote Build's agentic platform. My background includes implementing infrastructure as code with Terraform, leading incident response, and driving automation to improve reliability and efficiency.

I am particularly drawn to Remote's mission of simplifying global employment and its innovative, async-first culture. I understand the importance of rock-solid infrastructure for compliance across 100+ countries and am eager to apply my skills to ensure that Build's platform scales reliably and securely. I look forward to the possibility of joining your team and helping define the future of work.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]

Possible Interview Questions

Can you describe a complex incident you led? How did you ensure resolution and what post-mortem improvements were implemented?

In a previous role, we faced a cascading failure due to a misconfigured Kubernetes ingress. I led the incident response, isolating traffic and rolling back changes. Post-mortem we added deployment validation checks and improved monitoring for ingress metrics, reducing similar incidents by 80%.

How do you approach designing infrastructure for a multi-tenant, globally distributed system?

I prioritize isolation, scalability, and observability. Using Kubernetes namespaces, network policies, and resource quotas for isolation. For scalability, I design auto-scaling policies and use service meshes. Observability is key: centralized logging, distributed tracing, and custom metrics to detect issues early.

Explain how you would optimize cloud costs without sacrificing reliability.

I would analyze resource utilization using tools like AWS Cost Explorer and Kubernetes metrics. Right-sizing instances, using spot instances for fault-tolerant workloads, implementing auto-scaling, and deleting unused resources. Also, leveraging reserved instances for steady-state workloads.

Describe your experience with Terraform and how you manage state in a team environment.

I use Terraform with remote state backends (e.g., S3 + DynamoDB) for locking and versioning. Modules are shared across teams, and we follow a GitOps workflow with CI/CD to plan and apply changes. State files are encrypted and access restricted via IAM.

How do you ensure security compliance across multiple jurisdictions in infrastructure?

I work with security teams to implement guardrails like network policies, encryption at rest and in transit, and audit logging. Compliance is automated via policy-as-code tools (e.g., OPA, Sentinel) integrated into CI/CD. Regular security reviews and penetration testing are part of the lifecycle.

About Remote

Remote is solving modern organizations’ biggest challenge – navigating global employment compliantly with ease. We make it possible for businesses of all sizes to recruit, pay, and manage international teams. With our core values at heart and future focused work culture, our team works tirelessly on ambitious problems, asynchronously, around the world. You can find Remoters working from 6 different continents (Antarctica left to go!) and all of our positions are fully remote.
With Innovation as one of the core values, we have built Automation and AI capabilities into the requirements for every role.
We encourage every member of the Remote team to bring their talents, experiences and culture to the table to help us build the best-in-class HR platform.

If you are energetic, curious, motivated and ambitious, be part of our world. Apply now and define the future of work!

The Position

Remote Build is Remote’s agentic shift: as AI agents proliferate across HR and Finance stacks, they need to route through the employment infrastructure layer – labour law across 100+ countries, payroll, entity structures, the compliance rail. The infrastructure powering these integrations must be rock-solid, secure, and built for scale.

As Senior Site Reliability Engineer for Remote Build, you’ll own the operational excellence and infrastructure strategy that makes Build’s platform reliable, performant, and safe for customers. You’ll report to the Engineering Manager and work closely with the Remote Build leadership group, product managers, engineers, and customer success to ensure every engagement scales reliably from day one.

What you’ll do

Infrastructure as code at scale. Design, implement, and maintain infrastructure-as-code patterns using Terraform and Kubernetes that support both standard connectors and custom builds. Make it easy for engineers to deploy and operate with confidence.
Observability and incident response. Build and maintain comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting systems. Lead incident response efforts, conduct post-mortems, and drive continuous improvement in system reliability.
Security and compliance in motion. Work with our Security team to embed security into every layer of Build infrastructure. Ensure we meet compliance requirements across 100+ jurisdictions without creating friction for developers or customers.
Performance and cost optimisation. Continuously optimize system performance, resource utilization, and cloud costs. Make recommendations that improve both reliability and unit economics.
Automation and operational leverage. Identify manual operational toil and systematically eliminate it. Build tools and processes that let teams operate efficiently without scaling headcount.
Platform reliability and developer experience. Partner with platform teams to ensure APIs, MCP, and CLI are resilient and observable. Give infrastructure feedback that shapes how the platform evolves.

What you’ll bring

Senior-level SRE experience: demonstrated experience in a Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps Engineering, or SysOps role. You have stood up and operated production systems at scale.
Kubernetes and AWS: deep, hands-on experience running Kubernetes in production. Solid AWS fundamentals across compute, networking, storage, and managed services.
Infrastructure-as-code: Proficiency with Terraform or similar IaC tools. You write code to define infrastructure; you don’t click buttons in the console.
CI/CD and deployment automation: real experience setting up and operating GitLab, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or similar. You understand deployment strategies, rollback mechanisms, and safety nets.
Scripting and systems knowledge: strong bash scripting. Comfortable debugging system-level issues, reading logs, and understanding Linux kernel basics.
Great communication: you explain complex infrastructure decisions clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders. You write clear runbooks and documentation.

Nice to have:

Experience with 1+ backend programming language (Elixir, Python, Go, Java, Node.js, etc.).
Experience in consultancy settings.
Container registry and artifact management (ECR, Docker Hub, etc.).
Observability stack depth (Datadog, Prometheus, ELK, Grafana, or similar).
Experience working with or scaling multi-tenant platforms.

Practicals

You’ll report to: Engineering Manager
Team: Engineering
Location: Anywhere in the World
Start date: As soon as possible

Application process

Interview with recruiter
Interview with hiring manager
Infrastructure Deep Dive
Executive interview
Bar raiser interview
Offer + Background Check (Veremark & Remote)

#LI-DNI

Remote’s Total Rewards philosophy is to ensure fair, unbiased compensation and fair equity pay along with competitive benefits in all locations in which we operate. We do not agree to or encourage cheap-labor practices and therefore we ensure to pay above in-location rates. We hope to inspire other companies to support global talent-hiring and bring local wealth to developing countries.

At first glance our salary bands seem quite wide – here is some context. At Remote we have international operations and a globally distributed workforce. We use geo ranges to consider geographic pay differentials as part of our global compensation strategy to remain competitive in various markets while we hiring globally.
Our salary ranges are determined by role, level and location, and our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay for the successful candidate in this role is dependent upon many factors such as location, transferable or job-related skills, work experience, relevant training, business needs, and market demands. The base salary range may be subject to change.
At Remote, we foster internal mobility as a key element of our culture of employee growth and development, supported by a compensation philosophy that guarantees pay equity and fairness. Therefore, all compensation changes associated with an internal move will be reviewed by the Total Rewards & People Enablement team on a case by case basis.

The annual salary range for this full-time position is

$54,000—$150,000 USD

Benefits

Our full benefits & perks are explained in our handbook at remote.com/r/benefits. As a global company, each country works differently, but some benefits/perks are for all Remoters:

work from anywhere
flexible paid time off
flexible working hours (we are async)
16 weeks paid parental leave
mental health support services
stock options
learning budget
home office budget & IT equipment
budget for local in-person social events or co-working spaces

How you’ll plan your day (and life)

We work async at Remote which means you can plan your schedule around your life (and not around meetings). Read more at remote.com/async.

You will be empowered to take ownership and be proactive. When in doubt you will default to action instead of waiting. Your life-work balance is important and you will be encouraged to put yourself and your family first, and fit work around your needs.

If that sounds like something you want, apply now!

How to apply

Please fill out the form below and upload your CV with a PDF format.
We kindly ask you to submit your application and CV in English, as this is the standardised language we use here at Remote.
If you don’t have an up to date CV but you are still interested in talking to us, please feel free to add a copy of your LinkedIn profile instead.

Not only do we encourage folks from all ethnic groups, genders, sexuality, age, abilities, disability status and any other under-represented group to apply, but we prioritize a sense of belonging. We have 4 ERGs (Women, Disability, Queer, Minorities in Tech) who meet regularly with the People team. During your interviews and beyond, we ask & encourage anybody who needs an accommodation to request one from their recruiter.

We will ask you to voluntarily tell us your pronouns at interview stage, and you will have the option to answer our anonymous demographic questionnaire when you apply below. As an equal employment opportunity employer it’s important to us that our workforce reflects people of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences and this data will help us to stay accountable. We thank you for providing this data, if you chose to.

At Remote, we embrace AI as a valuable tool while prioritizing human creativity and authenticity. We look forward to meeting candidates who balance innovation with genuine expertise and experience. To learn more about Remote’s AI guidelines check see here.
Please note we accept applications on an ongoing basis.

Apply now >