We want people who are passionate about designing & operating secure systems at scale.

We are looking for an experienced, motivated, adaptable, empathetic engineer who is comfortable working remotely.

You will report to the Engineering Manager of the Availability team, & act as a contributor to the teams mission:

Mission: Improve customer happiness & retention by driving availability & process improvements across the company.

Focuses:

• Reduce incident durations: By taking an active role in incident management, trimming down bloated processes, & embedding within teams, the Availability Team decreases downtime & improves reliability.
• Enhance Customer Satisfaction: communicating effectively during incidents, & writing clear, concise post-mortems will increase customer trust & retention.
• Promote Standardization: Identify & escalate inconsistencies in tools & platforms to promote uniformity & reduce toil & errors.
• Mitigate Platform Risk: By embedding with other teams, youll be capable of identifying areas of need & assisting teams that are underwater, resulting in a more resilient system.

More than anything, were looking for someone empathetic, motivated, and driven to grow with us.

DigitalOceans Internal Culture & Tooling

DigitalOcean teams communicate primarily via Slack. The Availability team makes use of Jira & GSuite. We strive to make our work-life balance comfortable, & aim to scope work appropriately so that everyone works at a healthy pace. You might expect to be on-call periodically, potentially managing very high-priority incidents.

DigitalOceans observability platform comprises Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, & Elasticsearch. Knowing any of these tools is a bonus, because every service at DO is generally expected to use this platform.

The Availability team exists within the Resiliency division, an arm of the Infrastructure department. We are aimed at driving fast recovery & minimal impact to customer availability. The Resiliency division is made up of a diverse group of nearly 40 engineers located across the US, Canada, & Europe.

The Availability team is a new mission within DO & will be made up of roughly 8 engineers with various skill sets & backgrounds. There are growth opportunities along several tracks (i.e. Tech Lead, Staff Engineer, Project Manager, Engineering Manager, etc).

What Youll Be Doing:

As an engineer, you will spend your day-to-day on:

• Improving toilsome availability-related policies & processes
  • You will tweak, rewrite, & introduce policies & processes that have company-wide impact. You will need to be organized, patient, flexible, & empathetic.
• Communicating incident status clearly to customers
  • You will need to be capable of understanding complex, ongoing technical issues & writing clear, accurate reports intended for public consumption
• Working with service teams to drive availability improvements
  • Youll have to dive into tech stacks youre not familiar with - the ability to learn quickly & pick things up on the fly will be key.
  • You will need to be comfortable meeting folks where theyre at. We collaborate with teams with an aim to assist. Mentoring engineers on SRE best practices & driving rapid, incremental improvement that will have the largest impact in a given space are key to succeeding in this role.
• Communicating internally with tons of lovely engineers
  • This role is quite public - you will need to be comfortable speaking with a diverse set of engineers located around the globe.
• Working collaboratively in a changing environment
  • You will work cross-functionally to drive rapid, iterative improvements to our operational posture.
  • You will collaborate with architects, managers, & other business leaders of all types to drive improvements.
• Driving data-informed decision making
  • The Availability team leverages operational data to drive the right outcomes.
  • You will develop custom reporting leveraging Python, Plotly, Grafana, & MySQL, among other tools & various data sources.
  • You should be outcome-oriented - instead of being attached to particular tools or processes, you should seek to drive improvements via concrete outcomes.
• Responding to Slack messages & keeping up with various streams of conversation
  • Our work can require a lot of context switching - youll need to be comfortable hopping from one Slack conversation to another, many times per day.
• Spending time on hackathons, education, employee groups, & open source projects
  • You may spend roughly 5-20% of your time on things unrelated to your primary responsibilities. Hackathons, upstream open source work, employee resource groups - you name it!

What Well Expect From You:

• Significant experience using or administering Linux systems
• At DigitalOcean, we live & breathe Linux - our systems primarily run Ubuntu!
• Significant experience writing documents in English - especially technical documentation, post-mortems, and/or blogging
• If you have a blog, mention it in your application!
• Significant experience reading, writing, & debugging code
• We primarily work with Python & Golang, but adaptability is more important than any single language
• Experience with incident management & incident response
• Our team is deeply involved with incidents - any prior experience at a NOC, doing triage, etc will be very valuable.
• A strong SRE background
• Youve read the SRE book, worked in one or more SRE roles, & you understand how to apply these learnings to drive positive outcomes in an organization that does not strictly adhere to SRE
• Proficiency with shell & git
• Proficiency with continuous integration systems & concepts
• Familiarity with Github Actions is a plus
• Experience leveraging monitoring systems  (e.g. Grafana, Prometheus, Looker, Elasticsearch) for data-driven outcomes
• Comfortable executing in an asynchronous remote environment
• The Availability team is spread across North America & Europe!
• Transparency, honesty, & openness to constructive feedback
• A desire to work with a respectful & inclusive team

If you dont meet all of the expectations below, thats completely okay! Submit an application anyways, & include a cover letter telling us why youd be a good fit for our team.

Why Youll Like Working for DigitalOcean

• We innovate with purpose. Youll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with an upward trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud & AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As a member of the team, you will be a Shark who thinks big, bold, & scrappy, like an owner with a bias for action & a powerful sense of responsibility for customers, products, employees, & decisions. 
• We prioritize career development. At DO, youll do the best work of your career. You will work with some of the smartest & most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our organizational development team will provide you with resources to ensure you keep growing. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, & education. All employees have access to LinkedIn Learning's 10,000+ courses to support their continued growth & development.
• We care about your well-being. Regardless of your location, we will provide you with a competitive array of benefits to support you from our Employee Assistance Program to Local Employee Meetups to flexible time off policy, to name a few. While the philosophy around our benefits is the same worldwide, specific benefits may vary based on local regulations & preferences.
• We reward our employees. The salary range for this position is $161,300 - $241,900 based on market data, relevant years of experience, & skills. You may qualify for a bonus in addition to base salary; bonus amounts are determined based on company & individual performance. We also provide equity compensation to eligible employees, including equity grants upon hire & the option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program. 
• We value diversity & inclusion. We are an equal-opportunity employer, & recognize that diversity of thought & background builds stronger teams & products to serve our customers. We approach diversity & inclusion seriously & thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

*This is a remote role

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