Strategic Ops Engineer III

Backblaze is the object storage leader in the open cloud movement, and they are seeking a Strategic Ops Engineer III to join their team. The role focuses on managing incidents, problems, and changes while leveraging AI/ML for operational improvements and ensuring service reliability.

Responsibilities:

• Available to Lead and govern the end-to-end incident management lifecycle, including detection, triage, escalation, and resolution
• Drive major incident management (MIM) processes and communications
• Improve MTTR (Mean Time to Resolution) through automation and process optimization
• Establish and maintain incident response playbooks and runbooks
• Maintain and improve intelligent heatmaps leveraging AI/ML to identify recurring technical themes and prioritize long-term remediation
• Implement trend analysis and proactive problem identification using observability data and AI
• Track and manage problem records to closure
• Govern change management processes (lead the CAB), ensuring safe, compliant, and low-risk deployments
• Define and enforce change policies, risk assessments, and approval workflows
• Drive continuous improvement in release and deployment practices
• Maintain a strong understanding of system architecture and monitoring strategies, identifying gaps and opportunities for improvement
• Partner with engineering teams to improve system resilience and performance
• Reduce alert fatigue by improving signal-to-noise ratio in monitoring systems
• Leverage AI/ML for anomaly detection, predictive alerting, and automated root cause analysis
• Implement AI-driven solutions to optimize incident response and operational workflows
• Analyze large-scale operational data to identify patterns and recommend improvements

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in IT Operations, SRE, or similar roles
• Strong expertise in Incident, Problem, and Change Management (ITIL or similar frameworks)
• Proven experience in governing and optimizing operational processes
• AI & Data Expertise: Strong knowledge of AI/ML concepts, including anomaly detection, predictive analytics, and data modeling
• AIOps Experience: Hands-on experience with AIOps platforms or building AI-driven operational solutions (event correlation, alert prioritization)
• ITIL certification (Foundation or higher)
• Proficiency with platforms such as Jira, SNOW, FireHydrant, Moogsoft, etc
• Experience working in high-availability, large-scale environments