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Empowering people today to build a better future for the next generation.
The Role
Lead SRE and systems engineering for platform reliability and scalable infrastructure. Define SRE strategy, SLOs/SLIs, incident management, and architecture standards. Drive IaC (Terraform), cloud reliability, observability, CI/CD, chaos engineering, capacity planning, and automation. Mentor engineers, lead postmortems, and partner with product, security, and ops teams to reduce toil and improve system resilience.
Summary Generated by Built In
SENIOR LEAD SITE RELIABILITY & SYSTEMS ENGINEER
Platform Engineering | Infrastructure, Reliability & Systems Architecture
Location: Austin (candidates must be based in Austin or willing to relocate for this role)
ABOUT THE ROLE
We are seeking a Senior Lead Site Reliability & Systems Engineer - a versatile technical leader who combines deep SRE expertise with broad systems engineering capability. In this hybrid role you will drive platform reliability, operational excellence, and systems architecture across our infrastructure, ensuring our products are scalable, resilient, and delivered with high velocity. You will partner with engineering, product, and operations teams to embed reliability and sound systems design at every layer of the stack.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Reliability Engineering & Incident Management
Systems Architecture & Design
Platform & Infrastructure
Leadership, Mentorship & Collaboration
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
WHAT WE OFFER
Compensation & Benefits
Culture & Growth
USD 163,400.00 - 272,300.00
Compensation:
Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $163,400.00 - $272,300.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.
Benefits:
The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company's needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.
EOE, including disability/vets
Platform Engineering | Infrastructure, Reliability & Systems Architecture
Location: Austin (candidates must be based in Austin or willing to relocate for this role)
ABOUT THE ROLE
We are seeking a Senior Lead Site Reliability & Systems Engineer - a versatile technical leader who combines deep SRE expertise with broad systems engineering capability. In this hybrid role you will drive platform reliability, operational excellence, and systems architecture across our infrastructure, ensuring our products are scalable, resilient, and delivered with high velocity. You will partner with engineering, product, and operations teams to embed reliability and sound systems design at every layer of the stack.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Reliability Engineering & Incident Management
- Define and drive the SRE strategy, roadmap, and standards across engineering teams
- Establish and enforce SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets across all production services
- Own the incident management lifecycle - detection, response, resolution, and prevention
- Lead blameless postmortems and translate findings into lasting systemic improvements
- Manage on-call rotations and aggressively reduce toil through automation
Systems Architecture & Design
- Lead the design and evolution of large-scale, distributed systems and platform infrastructure
- Define technical standards, architectural patterns, and engineering best practices org-wide
- Evaluate and recommend technologies and tooling aligned to business and reliability requirements
- Conduct architecture reviews and provide guidance on complex technical trade-offs
- Lead capacity planning, performance engineering, and infrastructure scaling strategies
Platform & Infrastructure
- Build and maintain highly available, fault-tolerant infrastructure on cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)
- Drive infrastructure-as-code adoption (Terraform) and enforce best practices
- Architect and implement observability platforms - metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting
- Build and improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and release engineering workflows
- Lead chaos engineering and game day exercises to validate system resilience
- Champion automation across provisioning, testing, deployment, and monitoring workflows
Leadership, Mentorship & Collaboration
- Mentor and grow a team of SREs, platform engineers, and systems engineers
- Partner with DevOps, security, and product teams to align on shared platform goals
- Serve as the technical escalation point for critical infrastructure incidents and outages
- Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders and leadership
- Contribute to build vs. buy evaluations and drive strategic vendor assessments
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 8+ years of experience in SRE, systems engineering, platform engineering, or DevOps roles
- 3+ years in a senior or lead capacity with ownership of large-scale, distributed systems
- Deep expertise in at least one major cloud provider - AWS preferred
- Strong proficiency in Python, Go, Bash, Java, or C++
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, container orchestration, and service mesh technologies
- Solid understanding of Linux/Unix internals, networking (TCP/IP, DNS, TLS/SSL, load balancing)
- Proficiency with observability tooling: Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent
- Proven track record defining and operating against SLOs and error budgets
- Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools - Terraform required
- Strong understanding of distributed systems design, security fundamentals, and data governance
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience with service mesh (Istio, Linkerd) and API gateways (Kong, Apigee)
- Background in systems integration across enterprise middleware, ERP, or CRM platforms
- Familiarity with FinOps practices and cloud cost optimization
- Experience in regulated industries: financial services, automotive, healthcare, or government
- Familiarity with compliance frameworks: SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIST
- Track record of leading migrations - legacy-to-cloud or monolith-to-microservices
- Relevant certifications: AWS Solutions Architect, CKA/CKAD, GCP Professional, or Red Hat RHCA
WHAT WE OFFER
Compensation & Benefits
- Competitive base salary + annual bonus
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
- 401(k) with company match
- Generous PTO and paid parental leave
Culture & Growth
- Flexible hybrid work model
- Learning & development budget (conferences, certs, courses)
- Engineering-first culture with direct product impact
- Collaborative teams and transparent leadership
USD 163,400.00 - 272,300.00
Compensation:
Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $163,400.00 - $272,300.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.
Benefits:
The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company's needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.
EOE, including disability/vets
Skills Required
- 8+ years of experience in SRE, systems engineering, platform engineering, or DevOps roles
- 3+ years in a senior or lead capacity with ownership of large-scale, distributed systems
- Deep expertise in at least one major cloud provider (AWS preferred)
- Strong proficiency in Python, Go, Bash, Java, or C++
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, container orchestration, and service mesh technologies
- Solid understanding of Linux/Unix internals and networking (TCP/IP, DNS, TLS/SSL, load balancing)
- Proficiency with observability tooling such as Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent
- Proven track record defining and operating against SLOs and error budgets
- Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform)
- Strong understanding of distributed systems design, security fundamentals, and data governance
- Experience with service mesh implementations (Istio, Linkerd)
- Experience with API gateways (Kong, Apigee)
- Background in systems integration across enterprise middleware, ERP, or CRM platforms
- Familiarity with FinOps practices and cloud cost optimization
- Experience in regulated industries (financial services, automotive, healthcare, or government)
- Familiarity with compliance frameworks: SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIST
- Track record of leading migrations (legacy-to-cloud or monolith-to-microservices)
- Relevant certifications (AWS Solutions Architect, CKA/CKAD, GCP Professional, Red Hat RHCA)
What the Team is Saying
Belinda
Manager of Network Automation
Tonya
Director of Agile Delivery
Chris
Manager of Engineering Support & Delivery
John Chapman
National Client Sales Director, Cox Automotive
Kib Yahyehyrab
Audit Analysis, Cox Enterprises
Jenny Arias
Marketing & Events Assistant, Cox Farms
Cox Enterprises Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Medical coverage spans multiple Aetna plan options with in-network preventive care at 100%, plus mental-health access including at-no-cost virtual therapy for those on the Cox Aetna plan. Added programs like PrudentRx for $0 select specialty meds, Hinge Health, and Calm expand clinical and wellness support.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave, fertility benefits via Progyny, adoption assistance with defined reimbursement limits, and childcare/backup care resources demonstrate robust family-forming and caregiving support. Supports such as Milk Stork and Care.com membership extend this coverage to practical needs.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) program is described with a dollar-for-dollar match up to 6% plus an additional 2% automatic contribution for eligible employees, alongside financial coaching and student-loan tools. Administration via Vanguard and clear plan references signal mature retirement support.
Cox Enterprises Insights
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The Company
What We Do
For well over a century, Cox Enterprises has been shaping the future with daring ideas and values-driven thinking. Since our founding in 1898, our relentless spirit of innovation has driven us to disrupt industries and enhance the quality of life in the communities we serve. Through our major divisions — Cox Communications, Cox Automotive and Cox Farms — our people have countless opportunities to grow and make an impact in the communications and automotive industries, as well as in new ventures in agriculture, cleantech, digital media and more. As a privately-held, family-owned business, we know that people are our most valuable asset. We offer a supportive and inclusive environment with flexible career growth, amazing benefits and work-life balance at the forefront. Our mission, our ways of working and our commitment to people are what make our workplace culture remarkably flexible and resilient. Join us to build a better future and make your mark.
Why Work With Us
At our core, Cox is a technology company that values human relationships. We know people feel most empowered when their work has meaning, when they feel respected and have opportunities to grow. “Career satisfaction” is not enough at Cox — we’re here to help you find balance, live well and achieve your career goals even as they change over time.
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Cox Enterprises Teams
Cox Enterprises Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
Every person has different working styles and preferences — and we aim to empower teams to work where they are most comfortable. Some roles require in-person work, but for those that can be performed remotely, we offer flexibility.
Typical time on-site:
Flexible
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