Principal Site Reliability Engineer

About Lumen

Lumen connects the world. We are igniting business growth by connecting people, data and applications – quickly, securely, and effortlessly. Together, we are building a culture and company from the people up – committed to teamwork, trust and transparency. People power progress.

 

We’re looking for top-tier talent and offer the flexibility you need to thrive and deliver lasting impact. Join us as we digitally connect the world and shape the future.

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)/ Platform Engineer / DevOps Engineer with deep expertise in Kubernetesto design, implement, and manage high-availability, scalable systems primarily on AWS EKS. In this role, you will leverage tools like Terraform, ArgoCD, and GitHub Actions to automate infrastructure and workflows while implementing progressive deployment practices (e.g., blue-green, canary, or feature flagging). This position requires someone who can troubleshoot complex systems, implement robust monitoring and guardrails for databases and applications, and maintain a focus on optimizing performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency.

Location

This position is work from home within the US. 

The Main Responsibilities

Kubernetes Management & Troubleshooting:

•  Design and manage Kubernetes clusters (AWS EKS) with a focus on networking, scalability, security, and reliability.
•  Troubleshoot complex, cross-system issues involving Kubernetes, databases, networking, and cloud infrastructure.
•  Implement and maintain guardrails to ensure consistent and secure operation of Kubernetes workloads.

Infrastructure Design & Automation:

•  Architect, build, and maintain highly available, fault-tolerant systems using AWS services.
•  Use Terraform to define infrastructure as code, enabling scalable, repeatable, and secure deployments.
•  Automate provisioning, configuration, and updates for cloud infrastructure with a focus on GitOps principles using ArgoCD and GitHub Actions.

System Guardrails & Application Monitoring:

•  Set up and enforce guardrails for databases, infrastructure, and applications, ensuring consistency and adherence to best practices.
•  Implement robust application and infrastructure monitoring using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and potentially Datadog.
•  Ensure proactive alerting and predictive monitoring to detect issues before they impact users.

Progressive Deployment & CI/CD:

•  Design and implement deployment strategies like blue-green deployments, canary releases, and feature-flag-based rollouts.
•  Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines to streamline application delivery, testing, and deployment.

Collaboration & Best Practices:

•  Partner with development teams to embed reliability and security best practices into the application lifecycle.
•  Drive a culture of operational excellence, ensuring teams build for reliability, scalability, and security from the ground up.

Resilience & Continuous Improvement:

•  Conduct post-incident reviews to identify root causes and prevent future incidents.
•  Implement practices like chaos engineering to test and enhance system resilience.

Networking & Security:

•  Design and manage secure networking solutions, including AWS VPCs, Kubernetes networking, and firewalls.
•  Ensure compliance with security best practices and industry standards.

What We Look For in a Candidate

Kubernetes Expertise:

•  Deep hands-on experience managing Kubernetes clusters (AWS EKS or similar) with a focus on networking, scaling, and security.
•  Strong troubleshooting skills across Kubernetes workloads, infrastructure, and networking.

Infrastructure as Code & Automation:

•  Expertise in Terraform for infrastructure as code.
•  Proven experience with ArgoCD and GitHub Actions for GitOps workflows and CI/CD pipelines.

Monitoring & Observability:

•  Proficiency in Prometheus, Grafana, and incident management workflows.
•  Experience implementing application-level monitoring and tracing to identify performance bottlenecks.

Guardrails & System Security:

•  Demonstrated ability to set up guardrails for databases, Kubernetes clusters, and applications to ensure reliable and