Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
Software Engineering
Palo Alto, CA, USA
USD 175k-229k / year
Posted on Jul 30, 2026
Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
Palo Alto, CA
Engineering
Hybrid
Full-time
Instrumental builds the manufacturing acceleration platform behind the world’s most complex electronics. We capture digital exhaust and engineering context from assembly lines—images, test logs, BOM data, performance, repair cycles—and our AI engines identify insights that are difficult or impossible for human engineers to find. We accelerate the companies building the AI era by improving manufacturing yield, throughput, and ramp. NVIDIA, Meta, L3Harris, and their manufacturing partners rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product introduction and production.
The Instrumental platform collects, intelligently transforms, and contextually presents manufacturing data to technical end-users, enabling them to optimize their manufacturing process in real-time. Our core technology is proprietary ML algorithms, packaged in an accessible, user-centric user interface – we believe we must have both the best technology and the best access to that technology to win.
Requirements:
- 5 or more years of DevOps or SRE experience deploying and operating commercial SaaS platforms on public cloud infrastructure, AWS preferred.
- Expert knowledge with Linux, shell, containerization, Kubernetes, IaC (terraform preferred), monitoring, logging, and APM tools.
- Proven ability to take initiative and drive impactful projects to completion efficiently and independently.
- Comfort with ambiguity, pace, and frequent pivots inherent in a startup environment, with a track record of creating clarity for teams.
- Experience introducing and integrating AI tools/processes into development and operation workflows.
- Demonstrated skill in setting, iterating on, and measuring KPIs to ensure ongoing performance, reliability and efficiency.
- Network/application security and compliance experience is a plus.
Who You Are:
- Dead serious about performance, scalability, and reliability (PSR): You care deeply about how systems behave in the real world and sweat the details around latency, uptime, and scale.
- Systems engineering & infrastructure expertise: You’ve spent real time building and running distributed systems and know your way around cloud infrastructure, networks, and operating systems.
- Automation, automation, automation: If something is repetitive or error-prone, your first instinct is to automate it and make it disappear.
- Operating in ambiguity & high-growth environments: You’re comfortable making good calls without perfect information and adapting as the system and company grow fast.
- Dependable, trustworthy: People trust you to own problems, show up when things are broken, and follow through.
This position requires access to items and data that are developed under U.S. government contracts and subject to dissemination controls that limit access to U.S. citizens only.
We’re a growing team that works collaboratively, is supportive of each other, and is highly energized by the opportunity for a large impact. We actively work to promote an inclusive environment, valuing passion and the ability to learn. You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t precisely match the job description!
The following is a representative annual base salary range for this position within the Bay Area: $175-229k. We consider candidates at multiple levels for this role. Job level and salary opportunities are evaluated through our interview process – we review the experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of each applicant.
Instrumental is proud to offer a highly-rated variety of benefits, including health, vision, dental, commuter plans, and parental leave.
At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. Employees are expected to comply with company engineering, security, access control, and privacy policies, and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.
First name *
Last name *
Email *
LinkedIn URL
Phone number *
Location *
Resume *
Click to upload or drag and drop here
Cover letter
Click to upload or drag and drop here
Are you legally authorized to work in the United States? *
Do you now or in the future require sponsorship for employment visa status (this includes candidates currently on F1 and/or OPT visa status)? *
This is a hybrid role that requires you to be in-office M/W/F in Palo Alto, CA. Is this a schedule you are able to accommodate? *
Can you briefly describe a time when you encountered a problem without an obvious solution? How did you decide what steps to take next?
Req ID: R83