Senior Site Reliability Engineer

We are seeking a site reliability engineer to join our team! You’ll work with a production engineering team to improve application reliability and performance. You’ll us a software engineering approach to solving operational problems. You'll develop internal tools and systems for all engineering teams to use. Using site reliability principles and a robust approach to observability, you will not only fix problems but solve the issues that contributed to them when things go wrong.

This position works closely with Release Engineering and other engineering teams in our System's Zone to develop and maintain the tools and systems that support all of Zapier engineering. This role calls upon a broad range of experience and technologies. You'll get to interact with every engineering team in the organization. Maintaining excellent relationships and communicating effectively with those teams regularly is key to success.

Zapier is rapidly scaling and growing, and you will work directly on the applications that support over 5 million customers. Building new features and services is a big part of this role. We are continually developing and implementing new ways to support our teams, understanding our customers needs, and becoming experts in site reliability.

When bad things happen, you'll have the support of your team to solve contributing causes, to learn from failures, and to build a robust and resilient system for our customers. We look for the solution that automates the problem away, not the one that requires manual effort.

If you’re interested in taking your career to the next level at a fast-growing and profitable startup, then read on.

We know applying for and taking on a new job at any company requires a leap of faith. We want you to feel comfortable and excited to apply at Zapier. To help share a bit more about life at Zapier, here are a few resources in addition to the job description that can give you an inside look at what life is like at Zapier. Hopefully, you'll take the leap of faith and apply.

Zapier is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.

About You

We're looking for an experienced engineer who is eager to use software development approaches to operations. You should have a breadth of experience in software development, operations, and be actively practicing site reliability principles. There is a lot to learn, and we're continually improving our approaches to SRE. There are plenty of learning opportunities. We don't expect you to know it all, but we want engineers that are eager to learn.

Ideally, you'll have several years of experience in practicing infrastructure as code using tools like Ansible and Terraform. You’re used to working in a cloud environment with platforms like AWS and Kubernetes. Well-honed experience with the fundamentals of software development goes a long way here. Python and Go, we do it all. Generalists thrive in this role.

Writing is our primary means of communication, from pull requests, team chat, knowledge sharing, and communicating changes. Excellent writing skills are crucial to success here at Zapier. We are 100% remote and commonly work asynchronously. We even wrote a book on it.

You should feel comfortable taking a default to action. Most decisions are changeable. It's better to deliver something real today over something maybe better later. Sharing context, goals, objectives, and in-progress work in public helps us all achieve a common goal.

Things You Might Do

Administer multiple Kubernetes clusters, running on EKS
Build and deploy new services on AWS using Terraform, improving scalability, security, and availability
Write custom Kubernetes controllers to improve resilience
Create deployment pipelines in ArgoCD
Develop scaling strategies to handle millions of requests
Implement Open Policy Agent to enforce policies across our Kubernetes Clusters
Architect Terraform configs so they are reusable and independent
Use modern tools, like DataDog, Gitlab, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Istio, Kafka, and more as well as some truly amazing internal tools
Work with service teams to help them build and operate their services

About Zapier

Zapier helps people across the world automate the boring and tedious parts of their job. We do that by helping everyone connect the web applications they already use and love.

We believe that there are jobs a computer is best at doing and that there are jobs a human is best at doing. We want to empower businesses to create processes and systems that let computers do what they are best at doing and let humans do what they are best at doing.

We believe that with the right tools, you can have big impact with less hassle.

We believe in small teams. Small teams are fast and nimble. Small teams mean less bureaucracy and less management and more getting things done.

We believe in a safe, welcoming, and inclusive environment. All teammates at Zapier agree to a code of conduct.

The Whole Package

We're currently hiring for the following locations:

New Zealand
Australia

Compensation:

Competitive salary (we don't use remote as an excuse to pay less)
Great healthcare + dental + vision coverage*
Retirement plan with 4% company match*
Profit-sharing
2 annual company retreats to awesome places
14 weeks paid leave for new parents of biological or adopted children
Pick your own equipment. We'll set you up with whatever Apple laptop + monitor combo you want plus any software you need.
Unlimited vacation policy. Plus we require you to take at least 2 weeks off each year. We see most employees take 4-5 weeks off per year. This isn't a vague policy where unlimited vacation means no vacation.
Work with awesome companies around the world. We partner with great software companies all over the world and you'll constantly get to interact with people from these great companies

* Currently, healthcare and retirement plans are only available to US, UK, and Canadian employees.

How to Apply

We have a non-standard application process. To jump-start the process we ask a few questions we normally would ask at the start of an interview. This helps speed up the process and lets us get to know you a bit better right out of the gate. Please make sure to answer each question.

After you apply, you are going to hear back from us, even if we don't seem like a good fit. In fact, throughout the process, we strive to make sure you never go more than seven days without hearing from us.

Zapier is an equal opportunity employer. We're excited to work with talented and empathetic people no matter their race, color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, or age. Our code of conduct provides a beacon for the kind of company we strive to be, and we celebrate our differences because those differences are what allow us to make a product that serves a global user base.