DevOps Sr. Manager/Director - Kontxt

Company Overview: 
RealNetworks is a renowned leader in the telecommunications industry, dedicated to delivering innovative communication solutions. Our flagship product, KONTXT, revolutionizes messaging and voice technologies using AI, setting new standards for efficiency and reliability. Join us in shaping the future of telecommunications. 
What we’re like:
A lean team of smart, strategic-minded self-starters who are driven to create and deliver meaningful solutions to complex problems.  We are collaborators who check in with each other often and value, respect, and rely on the deep collective experience and expertise of our team. We also expect teammates to be proactive, self-directing their work, innately understanding how to prioritize the to-do’s, and reaching out if they need support from other team members. We value flexibility, comfort with ambiguity, and a positive get-things-done attitude.
Position Overview: 
As a DevOps Sr. Manager/Director (exact job title will be based on experience and seniority), you will play a pivotal role in leading our DevOps team while ensuring seamless collaboration between operations, engineering, and customer teams. This position requires a balance of technical expertise and leadership skills to guide team members, manage customer relationships, and ensure efficient operations. You will oversee the deployment, scaling, and performance of RealNetworks cutting-edge software solutions and drive operational excellence across all aspects of the DevOps lifecycle. Preferred location for this hybrid position is in Seattle, Washington.
Responsibilities: 

• Define, build, and lead a DevOps organization that supports operational tasks.
• Manage, mentor, and develop a team of DevOps engineers, ensuring skill development and alignment with organizational goals.
• Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and collaboration within the DevOps team.
• Oversee on-call rotations and ensure smooth incident management.

• Cloud architecture design, lead the process of building large apps using orchestration.
• Oversee the design, deployment, and scaling of infrastructure solutions using tools such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Kafka, and Cassandra.
• Manage high-availability environments leveraging technologies like Java/Scala, Python, AWS, Grafana, ELK Stack, Linux, and Oracle.
• Ensure best practices for CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, logging aggregation, and resource management.
• Manage support contracts (Redhat, ParkPlace Technologies).

• Interface with customer operations teams to ensure alignment on system performance and accessibility.
• Act as the primary point of contact for operational issues, fostering strong customer relationships and maintaining high service levels.
• Manage and resolve customer access issues in collaboration with IT and security teams.
• Manage trouble reporting processes, workflows, and improvements

• Drive improvement of software development process via DevOps collaboration with other dev teams through tools, processes, and other efficiencies.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to achieve milestones and optimize service delivery.
• Lead efforts to implement scalable NoSQL architectures and deploy advanced big data frameworks like Spark.

Qualifications:

• Proven experience managing and leading DevOps and Operations teams in a high-availability environment.
• Strong technical expertise in configuration management, CI/CD, cloud architecture design and infrastructure scaling.
• Familiarity with modern DevOps tools and common microservice stacks (e.g. Kafka, Cassandra, Airflow, and AWS), and strong Linux background.
• Excellent customer relationship management and communication skills.
• Experience working with large customers directly in fast-paced, high-pressure setting.
• Ability to balance technical responsibilities with team management and strategic initiatives.

• Experience with large customers/telecom customers is a plus.
• Experience in resource optimization and cost management in cloud environments.
• Expertise in designing complex NoSQL solutions and Spark-based big data systems.
• Experience working with Data Science pipelines and ML applications.

• A strategic mindset and ability to align operational processes with business objectives.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to guide teams during critical incidents.
• Commitment to fostering a high-performing, inclusive, and collaborative team culture.

Salary range for this full-time role is $115,000-$175,000/yr, depending on seniority and experience. This position is eligible to participate in our US Benefits Program (Details here)
RealNetworks is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, veteran or disability status. We have a dynamic, flexible work environment, and while we work hard, we value good work/life balance.

We look forward to meeting you!