Senior Staff Engineer

​​Distinguished Engineer – IaaS SRE 

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Position Summary  

​​GEICO is seeking an experienced Engineer with a passion for building high-performance, low maintenance, zero-downtime platforms, and applications.  You will help drive our insurance business transformation as we transition from a traditional IT model to a tech organization with engineering excellence as its mission, while co-creating the culture of psychological safety and continuous improvement.​ 

Position Description 

Our Distinguished Engineer I works with our Manager, Principal and Sr. Engineers to innovate and build new systems, improve, and enhance existing systems and identify new opportunities to apply your knowledge to solve critical problems. You will lead the strategy and execution of a technical roadmap that will increase the velocity of delivering products and unlock new engineering capabilities. The ideal candidate has a deep understanding of technology, risk management, site reliability engineering principles and strategic planning to design and implement resilient systems that safeguard our business from potential threats. 

Position Responsibilities 

​​As a Distinguished Engineer, you will: 

• ​Develop and drive the overall reliability strategy for the Network and DC-Ops SRE organization, aligning it with the organization's business goals and objectives 

• ​Provide thought leadership in IaaS reliability, staying ahead of industry trends and emerging technologies 

• ​Conduct comprehensive risk assessments to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities 

• ​Design and implement robust strategies to ensure maintainability and observability of our IaaS on-prem private cloud assets   

• ​Lead the design and architecture of resilient and scalable systems, considering both on-premises and cloud-based solutions 

• ​Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate GEICO best practices into the development and deployment processes 

• ​Develop and maintain comprehensive incident response plans to address various disaster scenarios on our OpenStack and Kubernetes clusters. 

• ​Conduct regular simulations and drills to ensure the readiness of the organization in the event  

​of a disaster 

• ​Hands-on software engineering and SDLC best practices (Technical Review Documents, Architecture, Software Development, Software Reviews, Testing, Production Readiness Reviews, among others) 

• ​Evaluate, select, and implement cutting-edge technologies and tools to enhance our IaaS capabilities including but not limited to processes, compliance, and visibility 

• ​Stay current with industry best practices and emerging technologies to continuously improve our Infrastructure as Code capabilities 

• ​Work closely with executive leadership, IT teams, and other stakeholders to communicate the importance of infrastructure as a service and foster a culture of resilience 

• ​Act as a trusted advisor, providing guidance on Infrastructure design and automation best practices to technical and non-technical stakeholders 

• ​Be a role model and mentor, helping to coach and strengthen the technical expertise and know-how of our engineering and product community 

• ​Influence and educate executives 

• ​Analyze cost and forecast, incorporating them into business plans 

• ​Determine and support resource requirements, evaluate operational processes, measure outcomes to ensure desired results, and demonstrate adaptability and sponsoring continuous learning 

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Qualifications 

• ​​Fluency and specialization in software development and best practices using programming languages such as Golang and Python 

• ​Understanding of datacenter and LAN/WAN network designs with a focus on overlay technologies 

• ​Understanding of operating systems, containers and how they interface with the physical world of the datacenters and networks 

• ​Understanding of datacenter lifecycles and expansion lifecycles  

• ​Understanding of SQL and NoSQL databases, including stateful services management and storage 

• ​Understanding of networking, caches, key/value stores, load balancing, global load balancing, queues, DNS and CDN 

• ​Primary Focus on managing infrastructure through code. 

• ​Deep knowledge of SRE practices, methodologies, and principles, along with a solid understanding of on prem and public cloud-based network, compute, and storage technologies 

• ​In-depth knowledge of hybrid cloud architecture, IaaS and PaaS technologies, container orchestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes), cloud efficiency and observability etc. 

• ​Strong background