Sr Lead Site Reliability & Systems Engineer

Company
Cox Automotive - USA

Job Family Group

Engineering / Product Development

Job Profile

Sr Lead Software Engineer

Management Level

Sr Manager - Non People Leader

Flexible Work Option

Hybrid - Ability to work remotely part of the week

Travel %

No

Work Shift

Day

Compensation
Compensation includes a base salary in the range of $163,400.00 - $272,300.00. The base salary may vary within the anticipated base pay range based on factors such as the ultimate location of the position and the selected candidate's knowledge, skills, and abilities. Position may be eligible for additional compensation that may include an incentive program.

Job Description

SENIOR LEAD SITE RELIABILITY & SYSTEMS ENGINEER

Platform Engineering | Infrastructure, Reliability & Systems Architecture

Location: Austin (candidates must be based in Austin or willing to relocate for this role)

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are seeking a Senior Lead Site Reliability & Systems Engineer - a versatile technical leader who combines deep SRE expertise with broad systems engineering capability. In this hybrid role you will drive platform reliability, operational excellence, and systems architecture across our infrastructure, ensuring our products are scalable, resilient, and delivered with high velocity. You will partner with engineering, product, and operations teams to embed reliability and sound systems design at every layer of the stack.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Reliability Engineering & Incident Management

• Define and drive the SRE strategy, roadmap, and standards across engineering teams

• Establish and enforce SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets across all production services

• Own the incident management lifecycle - detection, response, resolution, and prevention

• Lead blameless postmortems and translate findings into lasting systemic improvements

• Manage on-call rotations and aggressively reduce toil through automation

Systems Architecture & Design

• Lead the design and evolution of large-scale, distributed systems and platform infrastructure

• Define technical standards, architectural patterns, and engineering best practices org-wide

• Evaluate and recommend technologies and tooling aligned to business and reliability requirements

• Conduct architecture reviews and provide guidance on complex technical trade-offs

• Lead capacity planning, performance engineering, and infrastructure scaling strategies

Platform & Infrastructure

• Build and maintain highly available, fault-tolerant infrastructure on cloud platforms (AWS/Google Cloud Platform/Azure)

• Drive infrastructure-as-code adoption (Terraform) and enforce best practices

• Architect and implement observability platforms - metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting

• Build and improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and release engineering workflows

• Lead chaos engineering and game day exercises to validate system resilience

• Champion automation across provisioning, testing, deployment, and monitoring workflows

Leadership, Mentorship & Collaboration

• Mentor and grow a team of SREs, platform engineers, and systems engineers

• Partner with DevOps, security, and product teams to align on shared platform goals

• Serve as the technical escalation point for critical infrastructure incidents and outages

• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders and leadership

• Contribute to build vs. buy evaluations and drive strategic vendor assessments

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 8+ years of experience in SRE, systems engineering, platform engineering, or DevOps roles

• 3+ years in a senior or lead capacity with ownership of large-scale, distributed systems

• Deep expertise in at least one major cloud provider - AWS preferred

• Strong proficiency in Python, Go, Bash, Java, or C++

• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, container orchestration, and service mesh technologies

• Solid understanding of Linux/Unix internals, networking (TCP/IP, DNS, TLS/SSL, load balancing)

• Proficiency with observability tooling: Datadog, PrometheGrafana, Splunk, or equivalent

• Proven track record defining and operating against SLOs and error budgets

• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools - Terraform required

• Strong understanding of distributed systems design, security fundamentals, and data governance

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience with service mesh (Istio, Linkerd) and API gateways (Kong, Apigee)

• Background in systems integration across enterprise middleware, ERP, or CRM platforms

• Familiarity with FinOps practices and cloud cost optimization

• Experience in regulated industries: financial services, automotive, healthcare, or government

• Familiarity with compliance frameworks: SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIST

• Track record of leading migrations - legacy-to-cloud or monolith-to-microservices

• Relevant certifications: AWS Solutions Architect, CKA/CKAD, Google Cloud Platform Professional, or Red Hat RHCA

WHAT WE OFFER

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive base salary + annual bonus

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage

• 401(k) with company match

• Generous PTO and paid parental leave

Culture & Growth

• Flexible hybrid work model

• Learning & development budget (conferences, certs, courses)

• Engineering-first culture with direct product impact

• Collaborative teams and transparent leadership

Drug Testing

To be employed in this role, you'll need to clear a pre-employment drug test. Cox Automotive does not currently administer a pre-employment drug test for marijuana for this position. However, we are a drug-free workplace, so the possession, use or being under the influence of drugs illegal under federal or state law during work hours, on company property and/or in company vehicles is prohibited.

Benefits

The Company offers eligible employees the flexibility to take as much vacation with pay as they deem consistent with their duties, the company's needs, and its obligations; seven paid holidays throughout the calendar year; and up to 160 hours of paid wellness annually for their own wellness or that of family members. Employees are also eligible for additional paid time off in the form of bereavement leave, time off to vote, jury duty leave, volunteer time off, military leave, and parental leave.

About Us

Through groundbreaking technology and a commitment to stellar experiences for drivers and dealers alike, Cox Automotive employees are transforming the way the world buys, owns, sells - or simply uses - cars. Cox Automotive employees get to work on iconic consumer brands like Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book and industry-leading dealer-facing companies like vAuto and Manheim, all while enjoying the people-centered atmosphere that is central to our life at Cox. Benefits of working at Cox may include health care insurance (medical, dental, vision), retirement planning (401(k)), and paid days off (sick leave, parental leave, flexible vacation/wellness days, and/or PTO). For more details on what benefits you may be offered, visit our benefits page. Cox is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer - All qualified applicants/employees will receive consideration for employment without regard to that individual's age, race, color, religion or creed, national origin or ancestry, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, physical or mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, ethnicity, citizenship, or any other characteristic protected by law. Cox provides reasonable accommodations when requested by a qualified applicant or employee with disability, unless such accommodations would cause an undue hardship.

EOE, including disability/vets