L2+ SRE Operations Engineer

Summary

The L2+ SRE is the subject matter expert (SME) and automation leader. They focus on high-severity incidents, advanced automation, AI/ML-enabled operations, and driving the evolution of the operations model toward self-healing, proactive reliability engineering.

Responsibilities

Lead resolution of high-severity/complex incidents across hybrid infrastructure.

Architect and implement automation frameworks, self-healing workflows, and AI-driven ops.

Define SRE best practices, reliability SLIs/SLOs/SLAs, and operational standards.

Partner with application and platform engineering teams to improve resilience.

Drive observability maturity: predictive monitoring, anomaly detection, automated RCA.

Own continuous improvement of L1/L2 run books and automation pipelines.

Provide technical leadership, mentor junior SREs, and conduct training.

Identify new technologies, tools, and processes that elevate operational excellence.

Skills

Mandatory Skills (Must-Have)

1. Incident Command & Complex Troubleshooting

Expectation: Take leadership during high-severity outages, orchestrating technical response across teams.

Example: Lead a Sev-1 bridge call where multiple microservices are failing due to cascading Kubernetes issues; coordinate DB, infra, network, security and app teams to isolate the problem.

2. Deep Kubernetes & Distributed Systems Expertise

Expectation: Design, troubleshoot, and optimize complex Kubernetes clusters and multi-region deployments.

Example: Diagnose why inter-cluster communication in a service mesh is causing intermittent API failures and propose architectural fixes.

3.Automation Framework Design (Infra & Ops)

Expectation: Architect automation platforms to reduce manual toil, enable self-service, and support auto-remediation.

Example: Build an Ansible/Terraform-based automation pipeline that provisions, configures, and tests new app environments with zero manual steps.

4. Observability Strategy & Advanced Monitoring

Expectation: Define enterprise-wide observability standards (SLIs/SLOs/SLAs), implement anomaly detection, and predictive monitoring.

Example: Roll out a metrics-based SLO framework for all API services with automated burn-rate alerts in Prometheus.

5. Database & Application Performance Engineering

Expectation: Tune databases, caching layers, and app performance to handle scale.

Example: Identify DB query patterns that degrade API performance and recommend schema/index optimizations.

6. Cross-Domain SME Knowledge (Networking, Storage, APIs)

Expectation: Act as a go-to expert across infrastructure layers.

Example: Troubleshoot why API gateway latency spikes correlate with storage backend bottlenecks.

7. AI/ML in Operations (AIOps)

Expectation: Integrate AI-driven platforms for anomaly detection, auto-remediation, and incident prediction.

Example: Deploy an ML model that predicts storage saturation 24 hours before impact, triggering automated cleanup.

8. Mentorship & Technical Leadership

Expectation: Act as SME, guiding L1/L2 engineers, creating playbooks, and driving operational excellence.

Example: Conduct deep-dive training sessions on advanced Kubernetes troubleshooting for L2 engineers.

Preferred Skills (Nice-to-Have)

1. Cloud & Hybrid Architecture Expertise

Expectation: Design resilient, secure, multi-cloud and hybrid architectures supporting 100+ apps.

Example: Architect DR failover across AWS and on-prem for mission-critical apps with zero RPO/RTO.

2. Security & Compliance Engineering

Expectation: Embed security into ops workflows (DevSecOps mindset).

Example: Automate WAF rule updates and vulnerability scans into CI/CD pipelines.

3. Cost Optimization & FinOps Awareness

Expectation: Analyze infra spend and design efficiency improvements.Example: Identify overprovisioned Kubernetes clusters and implement autoscaling + rightsizing to cut costs by 20%.

4. Innovation & Tooling Evangelism

Expectation: Evaluate and introduce new reliability tools, processes, and methodologies.

Example: Recommend adoption of a service mesh for zero-trust networking and better observability.

Qualifications

7+ years in SRE/DevOps/Systems/Platform Engineering as Principal or Staff engineer.

Deep expertise in Kubernetes, distributed systems, and multi-cloud infrastructure.

Strong knowledge of security, WAFs, and networking at scale.

Advanced automation and programming (Python, Go, Terraform, Ansible)

.Experience applying AI/ML to operations (AIOps platforms, anomaly detection, predictive scaling)

.Strong incident command and leadership skills during outages.

Proven track record of driving automation-first operations transformations.