# Staff Software Engineer I - SRE **Company:** [Confluent](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/confluent) Confluent is seeking a Staff Software Engineer I - SRE to drive proactive reliability improvements across their multi-cloud streaming platform that processes millions of events per second. The role combines 75% hands-on engineering work (building automation, tooling, and reliability systems) with 25% incident management program leadership and cross-team coaching. This position requires 10+ years of SRE experience with deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud platforms, and incident management tooling. **Role:** Site Reliability Engineer **Seniority:** Staff **Locations:** IN Remote India [Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/confluent/0b2a4106-7f01-4205-813d-81e4fa1abdb4) Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/confluent/staff-software-engineer-i-sre --- ## Responsibilities - Proactive Reliability Engineering: Analyze systemic failure patterns and design improvements that prevent incident recurrence across multi-cloud streaming platform - SLO/SLA Framework Management: Define and maintain Service Level Objectives and Agreements, using error budgets to guide reliability investments - Automation and Tooling Development: Build tooling and automation to reduce incident response toil and scale team impact across engineering organization - Incident Management Platform Ownership: Own Rootly configuration, workflows, and integrations with PagerDuty, Jira, Confluence, and Slack - Reliability Data Analysis: Analyze reliability data to identify systemic improvements and build dashboards that drive actionable insights - AI-Assisted Incident Analysis: Explore AI-assisted approaches to documentation quality and incident analysis for improved response times - Incident Response Program Leadership: Own standards, practices, and continuous improvement of incident response across global engineering teams - Incident Commander Training: Define incident commander eligibility criteria, manage rotation, and develop training programs for engineering teams - Escalation Management: Serve as escalation incident commander when incidents exceed team's management chain capabilities - Post-Mortem Facilitation: Coach teams through post-mortems and develop actionable corrective actions to prevent recurrence - Customer Root Cause Analysis: Edit and review customer-facing incident documents ensuring quality, clarity, and technical accuracy - Cross-Team Reliability Leadership: Partner with engineering leaders to elevate reliability practices and serve as trusted advisor ## Requirements ### education - {"name":"Bachelor's Degree","description":"Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field preferred"} - {"name":"Advanced Technical Certifications","description":"Cloud platform certifications (AWS, GCP, Azure) and SRE-related certifications preferred"} ### technical - {"name":"SRE Experience","description":"10+ years in Site Reliability Engineering, incident management, or reliability engineering"} - {"name":"Cloud Platform Expertise","description":"Deep experience with at least one of AWS, GCP, or Azure cloud platforms"} - {"name":"Incident Management Tools","description":"Deep expertise with incident management tooling such as Rootly, PagerDuty, or similar platforms"} - {"name":"Distributed Systems Knowledge","description":"Strong understanding of distributed systems and failure modes at scale"} - {"name":"Observability Expertise","description":"Deep experience with observability: metrics, logging, tracing, and ability to diagnose complex issues"} - {"name":"Container Orchestration","description":"Kubernetes and container orchestration experience"} - {"name":"CI/CD Pipeline Understanding","description":"Understanding of CI/CD pipelines and release processes"} - {"name":"Systems Thinking","description":"Understanding how infrastructure design choices affect failure modes and recovery"} - {"name":"SLO/SLA Framework Knowledge","description":"Familiarity with Service Level Objectives and Service Level Agreements frameworks"} ### experience - {"name":"Large Organization Experience","description":"Large company experience navigating reliability/incident programs at 500+ engineer organizations"} - {"name":"Cross-Organizational Leadership","description":"Track record as trusted advisor across engineering organizations"} - {"name":"Process and Cultural Change","description":"Experience driving organization-wide process and cultural changes"} - {"name":"Technical Communication","description":"Strong written communication skills for design docs, one-pagers, and runbooks"} - {"name":"Post-Mortem Facilitation","description":"Demonstrated experience with post-mortem facilitation and incident analysis"} - {"name":"Async Collaboration","description":"Experience with asynchronous collaboration across multiple time zones"} ## Skills ### required - {"name":"Site Reliability Engineering","description":"10+ years of hands-on SRE experience with focus on proactive reliability improvements"} - {"name":"Cloud Platforms","description":"Deep expertise in at least one major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure)"} - {"name":"Incident Management","description":"Expert-level experience with incident management tools like Rootly, PagerDuty"} - {"name":"Distributed Systems","description":"Strong understanding of distributed systems architecture and failure modes at scale"} - {"name":"Observability","description":"Deep experience with metrics, logging, tracing, and complex issue diagnosis"} - {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration experience for multi-cloud deployments"} - {"name":"Systems Thinking","description":"Understanding of how infrastructure design affects failure modes and recovery"} - {"name":"Leadership","description":"Track record as trusted advisor driving organization-wide process improvements"} - {"name":"Technical Communication","description":"Strong written communication for design docs, runbooks, and incident documentation"} ### preferred - {"name":"Apache Kafka","description":"Experience with Kafka or event streaming platforms, or demonstrated rapid mastery of complex systems"} - {"name":"Multi-Cloud Experience","description":"Experience with 2+ cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) for enhanced reliability"} - {"name":"AI-Assisted Workflows","description":"Experience with modern CI/CD, GitHub, and AI-assisted workflows for automation"} - {"name":"Large-Scale Organizations","description":"Experience in organizations with 500+ engineers and complex reliability programs"} - {"name":"Post-Mortem Facilitation","description":"Advanced skills in facilitating effective post-mortems and developing actionable corrective actions"} ## Tech stack ### tools - {"name":"Rootly","description":"Incident management platform configuration and workflows"} - {"name":"PagerDuty","description":"Alerting and on-call management system"} - {"name":"Grafana","description":"Monitoring dashboards and observability"} - {"name":"Prometheus","description":"Metrics collection and alerting"} - {"name":"Terraform","description":"Infrastructure as code for multi-cloud deployments"} - {"name":"GitHub","description":"CI/CD pipelines and code management"} - {"name":"Jira","description":"Integration for incident tracking and project management"} - {"name":"Confluence","description":"Documentation and runbook management"} - {"name":"Slack","description":"Communication and incident response integration"} ### others - {"name":"AWS","description":"Amazon Web Services cloud platform"} - {"name":"GCP","description":"Google Cloud Platform"} - {"name":"Azure","description":"Microsoft Azure cloud platform"} - {"name":"OpenTelemetry","description":"Distributed tracing and observability"} - {"name":"Docker","description":"Containerization technology"} ### databases - {"name":"Apache Kafka","description":"Distributed event streaming platform"} - {"name":"ClickHouse","description":"For analytics and observability data storage"} - {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"For metadata and configuration storage"} ### languages - {"name":"Python","description":"For automation and tooling development"} - {"name":"Go","description":"For building reliability tools and services"} - {"name":"Java","description":"For Apache Kafka ecosystem development"} ### frameworks - {"name":"Apache Kafka","description":"Core streaming platform technology at Confluent"} - {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration platform for multi-cloud deployments"} ## Benefits ### benefits - {"name":"Equal Opportunity Workplace","description":"Employment decisions based on job-related criteria without regard to protected classifications"} - {"name":"Inclusive Culture","description":"Belonging-focused workplace with emphasis on diverse perspectives and leadership opportunities"} - {"name":"Global Team Collaboration","description":"Follow-the-sun coverage with clean handoffs maintaining sustainable work hours"} - {"name":"Professional Growth","description":"Opportunities to lead cross-team initiatives and drive organization-wide improvements"} - {"name":"Remote Work Flexibility","description":"Remote work opportunity in India with global team collaboration"} ## Compensation - **max:** 0 - **min:** 0 - **currency:** - **stockOptions:** false ## Interview process ### steps - {"name":"Initial Screening","description":"Phone or video screening with recruiter covering background, experience, and role expectations"} - {"name":"Technical Deep Dive","description":"Technical interview focusing on SRE experience, incident management, and distributed systems knowledge"} - {"name":"System Design","description":"System design interview covering reliability architecture, failure modes, and scalability patterns"} - {"name":"Behavioral Interview","description":"Leadership and collaboration assessment focusing on cross-team influence and process improvement experience"} - {"name":"Final Round","description":"Panel interview with engineering leadership covering strategic thinking and cultural fit"} ## Full description We’re not just building better tech. We’re rewriting how data moves and what the world can do with it. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. Our platform puts information in motion, streaming in near real-time so companies can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them. It takes a certain kind of person to join this team. Those who ask hard questions, give honest feedback, and show up for each other. No egos, no solo acts. Just smart, curious humans pushing toward something bigger, together. One Confluent. One Team. One Data Streaming Platform. ## **About the Role:** Confluent Cloud processes millions of events per second across AWS, GCP, and Azure. When incidents happen in a multi-cloud streaming platform, they happen at scale—data in motion, exactly-once semantics, and cascading failure modes that require deep systems thinking. We need an expert-level engineer who can drive proactive reliability improvements that prevent these incidents before they occur. This role combines hands-on technical work with strategic program ownership. You'll spend roughly 75% of your time on engineering: building automation, improving tooling, analyzing systemic failure patterns, and designing reliability improvements. The remaining 25% is teaching and coordination: coaching teams through post-mortems, training incident commanders, and evolving our incident response practices. You'll be part of a global team with follow-the-sun coverage, with clean handoffs that keep everyone working sustainable hours. Confluent has 800-1000 engineers across highly autonomous teams. This role sits within Cloud Architecture and Reliability - Supportability (CAR-S), a horizontal team that owns reliability standards and tooling across engineering. You're the person who makes us need incident management less. ## **What You Will Do:** * **Proactive Reliability Engineering** (\~75% of role) · Analyze systemic failure patterns and design improvements that prevent incident recurrence · Define and maintain SLO/SLA frameworks; use error budgets to guide reliability investments · Build tooling and automation to reduce incident response toil and scale team impact · Own Rootly configuration, workflows, and integrations with PagerDuty, Jira, Confluence, and Slack · Analyze reliability data to identify systemic improvements; build dashboards that drive action · Explore AI-assisted approaches to documentation quality and incident analysis · Design scalable reliability standards that reduce reactive workload over time. * **Incident Management Program** (\~25% of role) · Own standards, practices, and continuous improvement of incident response · Define incident commander eligibility criteria and manage the rotation · Available as escalation IC when incidents exceed a team's management chain · Develop and deliver training programs for engineering teams at all levels · Coach teams through post-mortems and on developing actionable corrective actions. * **Customer Root Cause Analysis (CRCA)** · Edit and review customer-facing incident documents to ensure quality and clarity · Drive turnaround SLAs while maintaining technical accuracy · Ensure clear explanation of what happened, why, and how we'll prevent recurrence * **Cross-Team Leadership** · Partner with engineering leaders to elevate reliability practices · Be the expert who teams proactively engage for guidance ## **What You Will Bring:** * 10+ years in SRE, incident management, or reliability engineering · Cloud experience with at least one of AWS, GCP, or Azure· * Deep expertise with incident management tooling (Rootly, PagerDuty, or similar platforms) * Strong understanding of distributed systems and failure modes at scale—Kafka/event streaming expertise preferred, or demonstrated rapid mastery of complex systems * Deep experience with observability: metrics, logging, tracing—ability to diagnose complex issues · Kubernetes and container orchestration experience · Understanding of CI/CD pipelines and release processes · Systems thinking: understanding how infrastructure design choices affect failure modes and recovery · Familiarity with SLO/SLA frameworks. * Track record as a trusted advisor across engineering organizations · Experience driving org-wide process and cultural changes · Strong written communication (design docs, one-pagers, runbooks) · Post-mortem facilitation experience · Experience with async collaboration across time zones * Large company experience navigating reliability/incident programs at 500+ engineer organizations· ## **What Gives You an Edge:** * Multi-cloud experience (minimum 2+ of AWS/GCP/Azure). * Modern CI/CD, GitHub, AI-assisted workflows—you'll have the freedom to build what you need ## **Ready to build what's next? Let’s get in motion.** ### # **Come As You Are** Belonging isn’t a perk here. It’s the baseline. We work across time zones and backgrounds, knowing the best ideas come from different perspectives. And we make space for everyone to lead, grow, and challenge what’s possible. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Employment decisions are based on job-related criteria, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other classification protected by law.