Director of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

Backblaze is the object storage leader in the open cloud movement, and they are seeking a Director of SRE to join their Cloud Operations leadership team. This role involves leading front-line teams responsible for delivering mission-critical SRE production services, focusing on performance measurement, incident/change management, and driving operational excellence.

Responsibilities:

• 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
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally as needed
• Remote - Continental USA OK, with experience managing remotely
• Six-Sigma training and/or certification a plus