[Remote] Principal Site Reliability Engineer
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Upstart is a leading AI lending marketplace on a mission to reduce the cost and complexity of borrowing for all Americans. They are seeking a Principal Site Reliability Engineer to lead the SRE team in ensuring the reliability and observability of their production systems while driving best practices and collaborating with cross-functional teams to enhance operational excellence.
Responsibilities
- Lead the definition, advocacy, and adoption of SRE principles across engineering teams
- Partner with leadership to shape long-term reliability, resiliency, and observability strategies
- Champion distributed tracing, real user monitoring (RUM), and key performance metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) to improve system visibility and user experience
- Build and scale self-healing systems to minimize manual intervention and reduce downtime
- Drive enterprise-wide improvements to incident response processes, including those related to Machine Learning systems
- Collaborate closely with Development Productivity and Quality teams to improve engineering velocity without sacrificing reliability
- Influence technical and operational roadmaps through data-driven insights and hands-on technical contributions
- Own and deliver cross-functional initiatives from concept through execution, applying program management skills to align stakeholders and achieve results
Skills
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or Mathematics, or a related field (or its equivalent) + 8 years of experience
- Combined experience with both Software Engineering and Site Reliability Engineering, with a balanced background in both disciplines
- Proven track record as an SRE thought leader and evangelist, driving adoption of reliability best practices across organizations
- Strong communication and mentoring skills to influence engineers across disciplines
- Proficiency in Python, Go, JavaScript/TypeScript
- Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CDK, CloudFormation, etc.)
- Experience building internal tooling from scratch in agile development environments
- Expertise with observability, distributed tracing, RUM, LCP, and performance monitoring tools (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus)
- Experience with on-call and incident management, including large-scale or ML-related incidents
- Strong background in automation and building self-healing systems
- Hands-on experience with LLM/GenAI to improve SRE efficiency and processes
- Program management skills, including the ability to propose innovative solutions, influence leadership, improve processes, and drive cross-functional projects to completion
- Experience with service mesh
- Full stack development skills
- Experience building or extending observability platforms
- Background in Development Productivity or Quality Platforms
- Experience in high-scale SaaS, microservice-oriented cloud environments
Benefits
- Target bonuses
- Equity compensation
- Generous benefits packages (including medical, dental, vision, and 401k)
- Competitive compensation, including base pay, bonus opportunities, and annual equity grants that vest quarterly
- Retirement benefits to help you plan for the future, including a 401(k) or Group Retirement Savings Plan with a company match of $2 for every $1 contributed, up to $15,000 annually (USD in the US, CAD in Canada)
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) with discounted stock purchase options for eligible employees (US only)
- Comprehensive health coverage designed to support you and your family, including medical, dental, vision, and wellness resources for US and supplemental health coverage for Canada.
- Health Savings Account contributions from Upstart for eligible plans (US only)
- Income protection benefits, including life insurance and disability coverage for added financial security
- Paid time off, sick leave, and company holidays, in line with local requirements
- Paid family and parental leave to support caregiving and major life moments (duration varies by country)
- Family-centered benefits to support fertility, parenthood, and caregiving needs
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) offering mental health support and life-centered resources
- Financial wellness resources, including access to financial planning tools and a financial concierge service (US Only)
- Annual wellness allowance to support your physical and emotional well-being and personal development, based on what matters most to you
- Annual productivity allowance to invest in relevant tools and resources you need to do your best work, no matter where you work from
- Connection and community through team events, all-company updates, and employee resource groups (ERGs)
- Onsite perks, including catered lunches and fully stocked micro-kitchens when working from one of our offices in the Bay Area, Austin, Columbus, and New York City (opening Summer 2026!)
Company Overview
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