Senior Staff Engineer, SRE

We’re a global team of over 400 people, working together to push the boundaries of open-source technology and multi-cloud solutions. Our vision is to help developers, builders, and creators bring their ideas to life with speed and simplicity, by providing a cloud data platform that makes open-source databases, search, streaming, and application infrastructure easily accessible to everyone.

The Role:

We are seeking a Senior Staff Engineer, Site Reliability Engineering to help drive the reliability and operational excellence of the Aiven platform globally. You will work closely with our SRE teams, helping set the technical direction and strategy to ensure resilient, scalable, and highly automated systems across our 24/7/365 operations.

You will work hands-on with SRE and engineering teams on platform health, incident response and cross-functional coordination, and drive continuous improvement in reliability and performance. As a senior technical leader, you will partner closely with engineering, product, and support teams worldwide, influence system architecture, and invest in tooling and automation to reduce toil and enhance production reliability.

This role combines technical leadership, customer focus, and deep operational expertise, with a focus on delivering reliable services at global scale and helping teams solve some of our most challenging reliability problems.

What You'll Do:

• Help define and drive global SRE operating strategy in partnership with regional SRE leaders across EMEA, AMER and APAC, ensuring alignment on reliability goals, operating models, and execution across a 24/7/365 follow-the-sun organization.

• Provide hands-on technical leadership across our multi-regional SRE teams, working closely with SRE teams and engineers across geographies.

• Help set the vision and roadmap for reliability engineering, enabling teams to deliver high-impact tools, automation, and process initiatives that improve platform resilience, scalability, and efficiency.

• Drive improvements to global incident management strategy and operating model, including on-call design, coverage, and escalation frameworks, ensuring seamless coordination and high availability across regions.

• Help establish a metrics-driven operating cadence, defining KPIs/SLIs/SLOs/Error Budgets, driving data-informed prioritization, and embedding operational rigor and continuous improvement across the SRE organization.

What We're Looking For:

• Proven experience working in senior SRE or infrastructure engineering roles, ideally across multiple regions and time zones.

• Strong track record of defining and executing reliability strategy at scale, including ownership of SLIs/SLOs, incident management frameworks, and operational excellence programs.

• Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership, mentor engineers, and influence teams without relying on organizational authority.

• Experience operating in a 24/7/365 production environment, with deep understanding of follow-the-sun models, on-call design, and large-scale incident response.

• Ability to partner cross-functionally with senior Engineering, Product, and Support stakeholders to influence architecture, prioritization, and long-term platform investments.

• Strong data-driven approach, with experience defining SLIs/SLOs and using metrics to drive prioritization, accountability, and continuous improvement.

• Solid technical foundation in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and automation, with the ability to engage credibly with senior engineers and influence technical direction.

• Experience driving large-scale technical and operational change, evolving operating models, and improving efficiency and reliability at company level.

Amazing! What’s next:

If you think Aiven is the place for you and that our Values align with yours, send us your resume and we’ll get in touch!

Global Benefits:

Our global benefits are designed to help you thrive and grow, personally and professionally:

• Participate in Aiven’s equity plan.

• Balance work and life with our hybrid work policy.

• Choose the equipment you need to set yourself up for success.

• Use your Professional Development Plan budget for learning opportunities.

• Receive holistic wellbeing support through our global Employee Assistance Program.

• Inquire about our Global Time Off Commitment (Parental and Sick Leave, as well as Personal Time)

• Enjoy country-specific benefits for our global cast.

How to Recognize and Avoid Employment Scams:

There has been a rise in fake job postings used by scammers to get personal information. At Aiven, all of our emails relating to recruitment come from an @aiven.io, @greenhouse.io or @eu.greenhouse.io domain and all of our interviews are conducted by video call or in person. Our interviews will never occur via text or chat. If you’re unsure of the legitimacy of a job opportunity/offer pertaining to Aiven, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at recruitment@aiven.io.

Equal Opportunities:

Aiven provides equal employment opportunities to all qualified employees and applicants for employment without regard to age, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability, marital and family status or without regard to any other similar personal attributes. Aiven complies with applicable local laws governing non-discrimination in employment in every location in which the company operates. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, training and any other terms and conditions related to employment.

At Aiven we are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities or special needs in our working environment and job application procedures. We make all reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities or who otherwise need support to thrive in the workplace. We are committed to continuously improving workplace accessibility. There is an option to request a discussion in the application process but if you have any questions before applying please write to us at recruitment@aiven.io.