Director of Site Reliability Engineering – SRE

Role Overview

• As the Director of SRE, you will be directly accountable for Backblaze’s production infrastructure and performance against key SLOs.
• You will lead and mentor our global Sr. SRE, and SRE Level 1 services teams, ensuring operational excellence.
• Additionally, you will share responsibility for managing demand forecasts and making strategic decisions regarding infrastructure expansion.
• You will also oversee the budget for all operational tooling and observability.
• Lead a globally distributed team of 15+ highly technical teammates.
• Provide 24/7 services for SRE.
• Own the single source of truth for the state of production.
• Centrally manage all aspects of incident and change management.
• Maintain a culture of continuous improvement, leveraging operational data to prioritize work across teams.
• Be customer focused, and have a strong bias to action therein.
• Collaborate closely with Customer Support to provide seamless world-class support.
• Collaborate with Supply Chain to manage proper levels of inventory.
• Lead & coordinate strategic initiatives to evolve and improve production support, incident/change/asset management.
• Liaise with Vendor Management and Legal to manage critical contract renewal cycles.
• Establish department-level objectives, policies, and procedures, creating OKRs or other measurements as applicable.
• Recruit & coach the team to support Backblaze and individual career objectives.
• Build strong cross-functional relationships, most notably with Infrastructure Engineering, Customer Support, and Data Center Operations.
• Manage department budget.
• Be an engaged, visible, and admired leader.

Requirements

• Proven experience in a similar leadership role within the MSP or Infrastructure-as-a-Service industry.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, including building high-performing teams and effectively interacting with colleagues across Backblaze and team members.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, with a data-driven approach to decision-making
• Significant experience in cloud-scale data center systems and services
• Significant experience in managing mission-critical operations of complex global infrastructure.
• A passion for process improvement and project management at scale
• 6+ years of management experience, with at least 3 years at the Director level
• 5+ years of hands-on technical experience in a field related to the team’s focus
• Six-Sigma training and/or certification a plus
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally as needed
• Remote
• Continental USA OK, with experience managing remotely

Tech Stack

• Cloud

Benefits

• RSU grants for full-time employees
• Annual Company bonus plan
• Healthcare for family, including dental and vision
• 401K
• ESPP program
• Flexible vacation policy
• Maternity & paternity leave
• MacBook Pro for work plus a generous stipend to personalize your workstation
• Childcare bonus (human children only)
• Fertility treatment and support
• Learning & development program
• Commuter benefits
• A culture that supports a healthy work-life balance