About this role.
Braze is hiring a Senior Site Reliability Engineer I to operate and improve highly available API ingress infrastructure supporting its Ruby on Rails monolith and Go services. The role centers on high-performance NGINX routing, Kubernetes ingress, automated scaling, capacity planning, and reliability engineering for very high traffic volumes. The engineer will partner closely with API product teams, define SLIs and SLOs, manage error budgets, and translate feature requirements into resilient architectures. Responsibilities also include PagerDuty on-call participation, incident response, root-cause analysis, runbook improvement, and proactive prevention of recurring failures.
Role DNA
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Job Complexity
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5/5Autonomy Level
5/5Communication Load
4/5Salary analysis
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Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would first validate the impact using RED metrics segmented by endpoint, region, ingress pod, upstream service, and response code. I would correlate NGINX timing fields with Kubernetes resource utilization, HPA behavior, pod restarts, network errors, and upstream application traces, then isolate whether the bottleneck is routing, TLS, connection saturation, cluster networking, or the API service itself. I would mitigate immediate customer impact through safe scaling, traffic controls, or configuration changes, then document the root cause and preventive actions.
I start with the user-visible service outcome, typically successful, timely API requests. I define SLIs such as availability based on valid responses and latency measured at meaningful percentiles, exclude clearly defined client-caused failures where appropriate, and set SLOs that reflect contractual commitments and operational risk. I then use error-budget burn alerts to distinguish urgent rapid degradation from slower reliability drift.
I would establish a workload baseline from request rate, latency, saturation, and pod startup time, then configure HPA metrics that predict service stress rather than relying only on CPU. I would set sensible scale-up behavior, stabilization windows, minimum capacity for expected bursts, and cluster-level headroom so nodes can be scheduled quickly. After load testing and observing production behavior, I would iteratively adjust thresholds and scaling policies while protecting downstream dependencies.
I create a precise timeline using alerts, logs, deployments, metrics, and participant observations, then examine the system conditions and decision context rather than assigning individual blame. The retrospective identifies contributing technical and process factors, evaluates detection and mitigation effectiveness, and produces clearly owned follow-up actions. I ensure lessons are translated into durable improvements such as better alerts, runbooks, tests, capacity controls, or architectural changes.
I use version-controlled infrastructure definitions, peer review, automated validation, and controlled deployment pipelines to make infrastructure changes repeatable and auditable. For example, I would codify Kubernetes, networking, monitoring, and NGINX-related configuration so environments remain consistent and rollback paths are clear. I also pair IaC with policy checks and observability to detect drift and validate that changes achieve their intended reliability outcomes.
At Braze, we have found our people. We’re a genuinely approachable, exceptionally kind, and intensely passionate crew.
We seek to ignite that passion by setting high standards, championing teamwork, and creating work-life harmony as we collectively navigate rapid growth on a global scale while striving for greater equity and opportunity – inside and outside our organization.
To flourish here, you must be prepared to set a high bar for yourself and those around you. There is always a way to contribute: Acting with autonomy, having accountability and being open to new perspectives are essential to our continued success.
Our deep curiosity to learn and our eagerness to share diverse passions with others gives us balance and injects a one-of-a-kind vibrancy into our culture.
If you are driven to solve exhilarating challenges and have a bias toward action in the face of change, you will be empowered to make a real impact here, with a sharp and passionate team at your back. If Braze sounds like a place where you can thrive, we can’t wait to meet you.
Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) at Braze are responsible for keeping all internal-facing services and platforms running smoothly, ensuring consistent system reliability and maximum infrastructure uptime. SREs blend the roles of sensible system administrators and software engineers, applying sound engineering principles, operational discipline, and mature automation to our production environments. We specialize in distributed systems, operating at an extraordinary scale that includes serving over 3.3 billion monthly active users, collecting hundreds of billions of data points each month, and delivering billions of messages to our customers’ end-users daily.
This Senior SRE role is specifically focused on supporting the Braze Ruby on Rails monolith and our growing fleet of Go API services. This position is embedded with product engineering teams who own APIs, taking their high-level feature requirements and helping translate them into reliable, highly scalable technology stacks. You will be responsible for the ingress fleets and API ingestion layers which serve as the main entry point for how the entire internet talks to Braze. Because of the highly operational and foundational nature of these ingress fleets, a deep, hands-on experience of both NGINX and Kubernetes is important.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
Lead NGINX & Kubernetes Ingress Infrastructure
- Architect and Operate Ingress Fleets: Configure, tune, and operate Braze’s high-performance NGINX routing, proxying, and ingress controller layers that manage massive, real-time API ingestion traffic
- Own and Expand Scaling Routines: Own, expand, and tune automated scaling routines for our high-throughput, API-based services, leveraging RED (Request, Error, Duration) metrics, Horizontal Pod Autoscalers (HPA), and customized scaling policies to ensure seamless traffic handling under extreme spikes
Partner with Product Teams on Resilient Architectures
- Translate Product Requirements: Partner directly with product engineering teams owning API features to translate product requirements into resilient, highly available, and scalable technology stacks
- Manage SLIs, SLOs, and Error Budgets: Establish meaningful Service Level Indicators (SLIs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for API services, helping teams navigate error budgets to balance rapid feature deployment with stability
- Systems Design & Capacity Planning: Conduct in-depth systems design, bottleneck profiling, and capacity planning to ensure Braze meets its strict enterprise-grade SLAs
Incident Response & On-Call Excellence
- Proactive On-Call Rotation: Participate in a PagerDuty on-call rotation, utilizing shifts not just to resolve structural alerts, but to update runbooks and proactively prevent incidents from recurring
- Blameless Retrospectives: Lead root-cause analysis (RCA) and blameless retrospectives for availability and performance incidents, translating operational learnings into permanent system improvements
WHO YOU ARE
Required Experience & Skills:
- Professional Experience: 5+ years of experience as a DevOps, or Site Reliability Engineer in a high-scale production environment
- NGINX Mastery: Deep hands-on experience configuring, troubleshooting, and operating high-performance NGINX proxying, routing, and ingress controller layers under heavy traffic loads
- Kubernetes Orchestration: In-depth, hands-on proficiency with Kubernetes administration, cluster networking, container orchestration, cluster scheduling, and container deployment
- Linux Fundamentals: Excellent, OS-level understanding of Linux/Unix internals, including disk I/O, memory allocation, TCP/IP networking, and process management
- Programming Proficiency: Strong programming/scripting skills—Ruby and/or Go preferred (or equivalent languages like Python, Java) to build custom automated tools, scripting, and platform frameworks
- Infrastructure as Code: Experience managing infrastructure using IaC technologies such as Terraform, Ansible, Chef, or similar frameworks
- Systems Thinking: Strong conceptual understanding of systems design—interfaces, boundaries, failure modes, edge cases, and cascading effects across distributed architectures
- Collaborative Mindset: Excellent documentation practices and a high comfort level collaborating asynchronously across remote-first, global engineering teams
Preferred / Nice to Have:
- Data Technologies: Familiarity with data-tier architectures in our stack, including Redis, Kafka, Postgres, or MongoDB
- Observability Systems: Experience using monitoring, profiling, and observability platforms (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog or similar tools) to narrow in on incidents quickly
- Cloud Infrastructures: Practical experience deploying and managing infrastructure services in major cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure)
For candidates based in Canada, the pay range at the start of employment for this position is expected to be between CA$153,815 – CA$277,000/year, with an expected On Target Earnings (OTE) between CA$172,000 – CA$308,400/year (including performance-based or variable compensation (bonus or commission). Your particular offer may vary depending on multiple individual factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. In addition to cash compensation, this role qualifies for a comprehensive Total Rewards package that includes equity grants of restricted stock (RSUs) so that you will own a piece of our company.
WHAT WE OFFER
Braze benefits vary by location, and we encourage you to review our specific benefits offerings for each country here. More details on benefits plans will be provided if you receive an offer of employment.
From offering comprehensive benefits to fostering hybrid ways of working, we’ve got you covered so you can prioritize work-life harmony. Braze offers benefits such as:
- Competitive compensation that may include equity
- Retirement and Employee Stock Purchase Plans
- Flexible paid time off
- Comprehensive benefit plans covering medical, dental, vision, life, and disability
- Family services that include fertility benefits and equal paid parental leave
- Professional development supported by formal career pathing, learning platforms, and a yearly learning stipend
- A curated in-office employee experience, designed to foster community, team connections, and innovation
- Opportunities to give back to your community, including an annual company-wide Volunteer Week and donation matching
- Employee Resource Groups that provide supportive communities within Braze
- Collaborative, transparent, and fun culture recognized as a Great Place to Work®
ABOUT BRAZE
Braze is the leading customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging™. Braze helps brands deliver great customer experiences that drive value both for consumers and for their businesses. Built on a foundation of composable intelligence, BrazeAI™ allows marketers to combine and activate AI agents, models, and features at every touchpoint throughout the Braze Customer Engagement Platform for smarter, faster, and more meaningful customer engagement. From cross-channel messaging and journey orchestration to Al-powered decisioning and optimization, Braze enables companies to turn action into interaction through autonomous, 1:1 personalized experiences.
The company has been consistently recognized as a Leader in marketing technology by industry analysts, and was named a G2 “Best of Marketing and Digital Advertising Software Product” in 2026. Braze was also named a 2026 Best Places to Work by Built In, a 2025 America’s Greenest Companies by Newsweek, and a 2025 Fortune Best Workplace in Technology™ by Great Place To Work®. Braze is also proudly certified as a Great Place to Work® in the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Singapore.
The company is headquartered in New York with offices in Austin, Berlin, Bucharest, Chicago, Dubai, Jakarta, London, Paris, San Francisco, São Paulo, Singapore, Seoul, Sydney and Tokyo.
BRAZE IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER
At Braze, we strive to create equitable growth and opportunities inside and outside the organization.
Building meaningful connections is at the heart of everything we do, and that includes our recruiting practices. We’re committed to offering all candidates a fair, accessible, and inclusive experience – regardless of age, color, disability, gender identity, marital status, maternity, national origin, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or status as a protected veteran. When applying and interviewing with Braze, we want you to feel comfortable showcasing what makes you you.
We know that sometimes different circumstances can lead talented people to hesitate to apply for a role unless they meet 100% of the criteria. If this sounds familiar, we encourage you to apply, as we’d love to meet you.
OUR AI-POWERED BRAZE RECRUITMENT PROCESS
At Braze, we’re committed to a fair and transparent candidate experience. To help our recruitment teams focus on what matters most — the person behind each application — we use AI-assisted tools at certain stages of our recruitment process.
This includes using AI to analyze the experience, skills and qualifications in your application materials to help with screening and prioritizing candidates. Such screening may amount to a form of solely automated decision-making. We also use AI for administrative support, like scheduling and recording interviews and summarizing interview notes. Our recruiting teams remain responsible for all hiring decisions and are involved throughout the process.
Depending on where you are located, you may have the right to request further information about how AI is used in our recruitment process, to opt out of AI-assisted review, to request a manual review of any decision made or to contest a decision.
Please contact us at talentdata.privacy@braze.com for any requests or questions. To find out more about our hiring process, check out this page.
Notice Regarding Automated Employment Decision Tool (NYC Local Law 144)
Our use of AI during the application review process may include the use of automated employment decision tools. Pursuant to New York City Local Law 144, for roles based in New York City, or if you reside in New York City, you have the right to request an alternative selection process or a reasonable accommodation instead of AI-assisted review. Please submit any such request to our Talent Acquisition team at talentdata.privacy@braze.com promptly after applying. A summary of the most recent bias audit results for such tool is available here.
Please see our Candidate Privacy Policy for more information on how Braze processes your personal information during the recruitment process and, if applicable based on your location, how you can exercise any privacy rights.
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