Who We Are
At 2K, we create some of the most iconic and culture-shaping video games in entertainment, including NBA® 2K, one of the top-selling franchises in the world, and legendary titles like BioShock®, Borderlands®, Mafia, Sid Meier’s Civilization®, and XCOM®, as well as fan favorites WWE® 2K, TopSpin®, and PGA TOUR® 2K. We build unforgettable experiences by pushing the boundaries of creativity, authenticity and innovation across every genre.
Our portfolio is brought to life by some of the most influential game development studios in the world. Visual Concepts, Firaxis Games, Hangar 13, Cat Daddy Games, 31st Union, Cloud Chamber, Gearbox, HB Studios, and 2K SportsLab create world-class experiences across platforms.
But what truly powers 2K is our people.
We believe the best ideas come from teams that feel empowered, supported, and inspired. As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive workplace where people are encouraged to come as they are and do their best work.
What We Need
The 2K SRE team owns the infrastructure behind every player connection. That covers all 2K game services, account platforms, CI/CD pipelines, databases and developer tooling, running on AWS and on VMware-based data centers in several global regions. Global launches and live-service events push these systems to their limits, and this team is expected to keep them running. Post-mortems here focus on systems, not people. Automation is the default answer to repetitive work. The infrastructure keeps millions of players connected, and the team takes that seriously.
The Senior SRE at 2K is a hands-on technical leader. You'll shape production infrastructure across AWS and on-premises VMware environments, working with network engineers, database administrators, systems architects and game studio developers. This is an ownership role. You'll set technical direction, improve reliability from architecture review through production, and close the gap between what engineering ships and what players experience.
Duties
Platform & Infrastructure
Design, build and operate scalable hybrid infrastructure across AWS and VMware vSphere, using Terraform for provisioning and Puppet for configuration management.
Own the full lifecycle of EC2 fleets and VMware clusters (ESXi, vCenter, vSAN, NSX): capacity planning, patching, image pipelines (Packer, AMIs, VM templates) and autoscaling.
Architect secure, resilient AWS networking: VPCs, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, Route 53, ALB/NLB and CloudFront.
Operate and automate F5 BIG-IP load balancers and firewalls (LTM, AFM, DNS/GTM): virtual servers, pools, health monitors, iRules, SSL offload and global traffic management across data centers and AWS.
Use blue/green and canary releases for game service deployments, with tools like CodeDeploy, weighted target groups, F5 pool weighting and DNS-based traffic shifting.
Databases (MySQL & PostgreSQL)
Operate MySQL and PostgreSQL at production scale, both self-managed on VMware and EC2 and managed on Amazon RDS and Aurora.
Own replication topologies, failover, backup and point-in-time recovery, and disaster recovery testing.
Lead major-version upgrades, schema migration tooling and zero-downtime maintenance procedures.
Tune query performance, connection pooling (ProxySQL, PgBouncer) and resource sizing for high-concurrency game workloads.
Observability & Reliability
Build and run the full observability stack: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog and OpenTelemetry, including database, VMware and F5 telemetry.
Define SLI/SLO/error budget policies and build alerting that cuts through the noise.
Lead chaos engineering and failover exercises (for example, AWS Fault Injection Service, F5 HA failover and database failover drills) to find failure modes before players do.
Drive incident response and post-mortems, with a focus on systemic fixes and real follow-through.
Automation, Security & Developer Experience
Eliminate toil through self-service provisioning, automated remediation and intelligent scaling.
Manage server configuration at scale with Puppet, Ansible and AWS Systems Manager, including module development, Hiera data design and code promotion workflows.
Automate F5 configuration through AS3, iControl REST and Terraform, and treat load balancer and firewall policy as code.
Harden CI/CD pipelines in GitHub Actions and Jenkins.
Build security into the platform layer through secrets management (PasswordState, 1Password, AWS Secrets Manager), IAM least privilege, F5 AFM firewall policy and policy-as-code (OPA, AWS Config, SCPs).
Leadership
Promote SRE practices across 2K studios through reliability reviews, runbooks and embedded collaboration.
Shape architectural decisions and write engineering RFCs that move the platform forward.
Must-Haves
5+ years in SRE, Platform Engineering or equivalent infrastructure work at production scale
Deep AWS experience: EC2, VPC networking, IAM, RDS/Aurora, S3, Route 53, ELB and CloudWatch
Strong VMware vSphere experience: ESXi, vCenter, vSAN and/or NSX, plus bare-metal server operations
Hands-on experience with F5 BIG-IP load balancers and firewalls (LTM, AFM, DNS/GTM), including iRules, SSL/TLS offload and HA pairs
Production experience running MySQL and PostgreSQL, including replication, HA/failover, backup and restore, upgrades and performance tuning
Strong IaC skills with Terraform; hands-on with Packer
Deep Puppet experience (modules, Hiera, r10k/Code Manager, PuppetDB), plus Ansible and AWS Systems Manager
Experience with observability tools: Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana and OpenTelemetry
Fluency with SLIs, SLOs and error budgets, including how to put them into practice inside engineering teams
Production-quality code in Go, Python or TypeScript for tools, automation and internal libraries
Knowledge of Linux internals, TCP/IP networking, DNS and TLS deep enough to debug at the system level
Incident response and post-mortem leadership, with a track record of systemic follow-through
Nice-to-Haves
Live-service game or large-scale consumer internet experience with millions of concurrent users
Database reliability engineering at scale: sharding, read-replica fleets and Aurora Global Database or cross-region replication
F5 automation experience (AS3, Declarative Onboarding, iControl REST) and multi-site global load balancing
Experience migrating workloads between VMware and AWS (for example, AWS Application Migration Service or VMware HCX)
FinOps and managing resources at cloud scale
Experience with AI and agentic development
Certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect, AWS Database Specialty, VMware VCP-DCV, F5 Certified Administrator, Puppet Professional or equivalent
Experience mentoring SREs or leading reliability working groups
As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to ensuring that qualified individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform their essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us if you need reasonable accommodation.
Please note that 2K Games and its studios never uses instant messaging apps or personal email accounts to contact prospective employees or conduct interviews and when emailing, only use 2K.com accounts.
Please note that 2K Publishing is unable to provide visa sponsorship or assistance for this position. All candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States without requiring current or future employer sponsorship.
#LI-Hybrid
Skills Required
- 5+ years of experience in SRE, platform engineering, or equivalent production-scale infrastructure work
- Deep AWS experience with EC2, VPC networking, IAM, RDS/Aurora, S3, Route 53, ELB, and CloudWatch
- Strong VMware vSphere experience, including ESXi, vCenter, vSAN and/or NSX, plus bare-metal server operations
- Hands-on F5 BIG-IP load balancer and firewall experience, including LTM, AFM, DNS/GTM, iRules, SSL/TLS offload, and HA pairs
- Production experience operating MySQL and PostgreSQL, including replication, high availability, failover, backup, restore, upgrades, and performance tuning
- Strong Terraform infrastructure-as-code skills and hands-on Packer experience
- Deep Puppet experience, including modules, Hiera, r10k/Code Manager, and PuppetDB, plus Ansible and AWS Systems Manager
- Experience with Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry
- Practical experience implementing SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets within engineering teams
- Production-quality coding experience in Go, Python, or TypeScript
- Strong knowledge of Linux internals, TCP/IP networking, DNS, and TLS for system-level debugging
- Experience leading incident response and post-mortems with systemic follow-through
- Live-service game or large-scale consumer internet experience with millions of concurrent users
- Database reliability engineering at scale, including sharding, read replicas, Aurora Global Database, or cross-region replication
- F5 automation and multi-site global load-balancing experience
- Experience migrating workloads between VMware and AWS
- FinOps experience managing cloud-scale resources
- Experience with AI and agentic development
- AWS, VMware, F5, Puppet, or equivalent professional certifications
- Experience mentoring SREs or leading reliability working groups
2K Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is described as comprehensive, with medical, dental, vision, mental-health resources and fitness/wellness perks available in many locations. It is often regarded as a strong part of the overall package.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) with company matching and related retirement programs are consistently highlighted. These offerings help employees build long-term savings and are considered competitive for the industry.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — The package includes paid vacation and sick leave, paid holidays, parental leave, compassionate leave, and an end-of-year break. Time-off policies are generally seen as a solid benefit, though specifics can vary by team and location.
2K Insights
What We Do
2K is headquartered in Novato, California and is a wholly owned label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO). Founded in 2005, 2K Games is a global video game company, publishing titles developed by some of the most influential game development studios in the world. Our studios responsible for developing 2K’s portfolio of world-class games across multiple platforms, include Visual Concepts, Firaxis, Hangar 13, CatDaddy, Cloud Chamber, 31st Union, and HB Studios. Our portfolio of titles is expanding due to our global strategic plan, building and acquiring exciting studios whose content continues to inspire all of us! 2K publishes titles in today’s most popular gaming genres, including sports, shooters, action, role-playing, strategy, casual, and family entertainment. Our team of engineers, marketers, artists, writers, data scientists, producers, thinkers and doers, are the professional publishing stewards of our growing library of critically-acclaimed franchises such as NBA 2K, 2K PGA, Battleborn, BioShock, Borderlands, The Quarry, The Darkness, Mafia, Sid Meier’s Civilization, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, WWE 2K, and XCOM. At 2K, we pride ourselves on creating an inclusive work environment, which means encouraging our teams to Come as You Are and do your best work! We encourage ALL applicants to explore our global positions, even if they don’t meet every requirement for the role. If you're interested in the job and think you have what it takes to work at 2K, we encourage you to apply!
Why Work With Us
We pride ourselves on creating an inclusive work environment, which means encouraging our teams to Come as You Are and do your best work! We push ourselves creatively to do the best work of our careers. We’re direct, open, and you’ll probably meet some new best friends – along with their dogs – sitting nearby. In short, it’s kinda awesome.
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2K Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
We are a blend of onsite, hybrid, and remote roles. Please refer to individual job descriptions for more details on location.
