Suggested rewrite: Led a cross-functional initiative that improved [business outcome] by [measurable result], demonstrating experience relevant to this role...
Senior Software Engineer, Site Reliability Engineering
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- Remote from
- USA
- Salary
- USD 179,400–272,800 / yr
- Department
- DevOps & Infrastructure
- Employment
- Full Time
- Experience
- Senior
- Published
- Apply before
- 23 Nov 2026
- Listing views
- 51
- Application actions
- 3
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The role, at a glance.
Thumbtack is hiring a Senior Software Engineer for its Site Reliability Engineering team to improve the availability, scalability, security, and efficiency of platform services. The role combines infrastructure architecture, software development, operational tooling, capacity planning, and production troubleshooting across a large distributed environment. The engineer will partner with product, developer-experience, backend-infrastructure, and applied-science teams while contributing to platform strategy. Core requirements include deep AWS and Linux expertise, strong coding ability, distributed-systems knowledge, observability experience, and participation in an on-call rotation. This is a remote, full-time US role with geographically tiered expected salary ranges.
Role DNA
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Pace & Pressure
4/5Autonomy Level
4/5Communication Load
4/5Salary analysis
Estimated compensation compared with the broader US market for similar roles.
Core skills
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Sample interview questions
I would first establish a baseline through service-level indicators, tracing, logs, infrastructure metrics, and dependency analysis. I would isolate whether the bottleneck is caused by application code, database behavior, network latency, resource saturation, or downstream services, then prioritize mitigations based on user impact and risk. I would implement durable fixes with alerting, load testing, capacity plans, and an appropriate error-budget or SLO review.
I would define service-level objectives tied to customer-facing outcomes and instrument the four golden signals: latency, traffic, errors, and saturation. I would standardize structured logs, metrics, distributed tracing, dashboards, and correlation identifiers across services. The result should help engineers quickly connect an alert to the affected user path, dependency, deployment, and infrastructure condition.
I review historical demand, seasonality, growth forecasts, workload characteristics, service limits, redundancy requirements, and failure scenarios. I validate assumptions through load and stress testing, account for headroom during incidents or regional impairment, and automate scaling where appropriate. Capacity decisions should be continuously revisited using production utilization and performance data.
I identify repetitive, manual, error-prone activities and prioritize automation based on frequency, operational risk, and engineering time saved. I use infrastructure as code, versioned deployment pipelines, automated validation, progressive delivery, and clear rollback mechanisms. I also measure whether the automation improves lead time, change-failure rate, and on-call burden.
I would provide concise, factual updates covering impact, scope, current mitigation, ownership, and the next update time. For engineers, I would include relevant technical signals, hypotheses, and coordination needs; for nontechnical stakeholders, I would focus on customer impact and restoration progress. After recovery, I would lead a blameless review with corrective actions, owners, and due dates.
About this role.
Thumbtack helps millions of people confidently care for their homes.
Thumbtack is the one app you need to take care of and improve your home — from personalized guidance to AI tools and a best-in-class hiring experience. Every day in every county of the U.S., people turn to Thumbtack to complete urgent repairs, seasonal maintenance and bigger improvements. We help homeowners know which projects to do, when to do them and who to hire from our growing community of 300,000 local service businesses. If making an impact inspires you, join us. Imagine what we’ll build together.
About the Site Reliability Engineering Team
Thumbtack’s Site Reliability Engineering team focuses on creating and maintaining a reliable, secure, and scalable platform vital for a seamless user experience. As a key contributor, you will design and support resilient systems, prioritizing high performance, availability, and throughput, with a focus on minimizing service disruptions, downtime, and latency. SRE impacts Thumbtack’s ecosystem across the entire stack, from linux systems to applications that drive the customer experience. Our work is high leverage impacting how Engineering, Applied Science, and many other teams deliver, run, and observe systems.
The challenge
The Site Reliability team is responsible for a broad set of technologies and systems with expectations to collaborate across the business. We are expected to develop and enhance existing capabilities while ensuring scalability, reliability and resiliency of infrastructure and software. You’ll work with engineering teams ranging from product development, developer experience, and backend infrastructure to collaboratively build Thumbtack’s ecosystem of platform services that have the right impact at the right time. Thumbtack values its cross functional collaborative culture, and you’d be positioned to contribute to the future direction and success of the engineering platform that serves as the engine of our applications.
What you’ll do
Design, create, and maintain software and systems to improve the availability, scalability, and efficiency of Thumbtack’s services
Set the architectural direction of infrastructure and platform services while supporting the engineering organization
Design and implement tools and processes used for deployment, change, service, and infrastructure management
Troubleshoot and debug critical systems throughout the SDLC
Contribute to the evolution and performance of capabilities we provide to engineering as a platform organization
Capacity planning and demand forecasting, anticipating performance bottlenecks
Participate in rotating on-call duties
In order to be successful, you must bring
Extensive fluency in AWS and Linux
Ability to effectively read, write, and debug code in programming languages like but not limited to: Python, Go, PHP, Javascript
Expertise in designing, analyzing, and troubleshooting large-scale distributed systems across web technologies like: DNS, TLS, HTTP/S, TCP/IP
Ability to decompose complex problems while understanding the tradeoffs necessary to deliver impact
5 years of experience managing infrastructure and systems
Demonstrable knowledge of instrumenting, operating, and observing a distributed system of microservices in a production cloud environment
Ability to communicate clearly and effectively to cross functional partners of various technical levels
Passion for reducing toil and improving developer experience
Expected salary ranges
For candidates living in San Francisco / Bay Area, San Jose, New York City, or Seattle metros, the expected salary range for the role is currently $210,800.00 – $272,800.00
For candidates living in Austin, TX or Washington DC metros or in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Washington states, the expected salary range for the role is currently $189,600.00 – $245,300.00
For candidates living in all other US locations, the expected salary range for this role is currently $179,400.00 – $232,100.00
Actual offered salaries will vary and will be based on various factors, such as calibrated job level, qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role
Actual offered salaries will vary and will be based on various factors, such as calibrated job level, qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role.
Thumbtack embraces diversity. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and do not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, age, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, military or veteran status, genetic information, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, provincial, state, or local law. We also will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable law.
Thumbtack is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If you would like to request a reasonable accommodation for a medical condition or disability during any part of the application process, please contact: recruitingops@thumbtack.com.
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