Sr. Site Reliability Engineer, DevOps - MethaneSAT

Put your passion and skills to work for the planet. Climate change is the most urgent issue of our time, and we need people like you to help us build a vital Earth — for everyone.

We’re Environmental Defense Fund, a fast-paced nonprofit with a growing staff of more than 1,000 people in nearly 30 countries. We deliver game-changing solutions that cut climate pollution and strengthen people’s ability to thrive despite the effects climate change is already having. We work wherever we can have the most impact, from local communities to top companies to governments worldwide, and even in space.

Our culture, values and commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion make EDF an exciting and meaningful place to work. Every job here makes a difference. Won’t you join us?

MethaneSAT, LLC, an affiliate of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), is launching a new, high performance, purpose-built satellite – MethaneSAT – to map and measure oil and gas methane emissions worldwide, with the potential to assess emissions from the full range of man-made sources. The satellite will enable us to gather methane emissions data on a global scale and with data from other sources, locate and quantify these emissions.  Data from MethaneSAT will help EDF reduce methane emissions by 45% by 2025 and holds the potential to help reduce the temperature of our planet by as much 0.5 degrees C by the end of the century.  This could be the most impactful environmental project yet conceived.

OVERALL FUNCTION

As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) on our team, you will work with fellow engineers, partners, and stakeholders to design, automate and manage the deployments of critical software in our Mission Operations System infrastructure. You will strive to understand user needs and engineering requirements, and utilize your expertise with Terraform, Linux and cloud infrastructure to design solutions that provide impact worldwide.

You will accomplish the above in deep collaboration with our Lead DevOps engineer, Mission Systems Sr. Director, and mission partners.  Together, you will design and deploy these architectures, including environments for development, staging and production operations. Furthermore, you will be responsible for designing and implementing complex systems such as non-linear, (sometimes) human-in-the-loop CI/CD workflows, secrets management, automation and systems for logging and observability.  You will be given the freedom and responsibility to engineer and implement robust, efficient solutions that meet the needs of our mission.  Finally, you will also be a significant contributor in the overall design, maintenance, and expansion of our cloud infrastructure, which includes both staff and external partners.

The Senior Site Reliability Engineer will report directly to the Sr. Director, Mission Systems for MethaneSAT, LLC, and will work closely with other MethaneSAT, LLC staff, key contractors, and EDF staff.   

LOCATION & EXPECTATIONS

This position can be performed 100% remotely from home for candidates based in the United States. While this is a full-time, non-exempt, salaried position with a standard Monday-Friday schedule, flexible support for occasional escalations that could potentially occur on evenings and/or weekends is needed. Ability to support a travel component of 5-10% per year is strongly encouraged for participation in staff retreat and workshop opportunities offered by MethaneSAT LLC and Environmental Defense Fund.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead the design and development of key deployment procedures for the MethaneSAT Mission Operations System infrastructure with Terraform and other tools as appropriate in our cloud environment.
• Administer scalable cloud infrastructure, including both cloud-native services and purpose-built components.
• Create tools and documentation to make development and deployment easier for the team, our stakeholders and external partner organizations
• Build, maintain and troubleshoot our development, staging and production operations environments.
• Develop and deploy observability mechanisms for monitoring and alerting on the system, including on-call procedures and playbooks and tools. Share on-call rotation with your fellow engineering team members.
• Explore, prototype, and recommend related initiatives such as metrics, logging and load testing.
• Navigate differing needs and priorities effectively, leveraging experience and technical skills to ensure the system meets the required mission requirements.
• Participate in advancing EDF DEI goals in which people from all backgrounds and experiences feel connected, included, and empowered to address the environmental and organizational challenges in alignment with EDF values.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Must be a US person (citizen, green card holder); MethaneSAT, LLC is unable to offer employer-based sponsorship for this role at this time.
• 3-5 years of professional engineering experience in a DevOps or Site Reliability Engineering, with demonstrated progressive responsibility and scope
• Bachelor’s degree in a science or technical discipline highly preferred; candidates with 10-15 years of work experience to compensate for lack of formal higher education may also be considered
• Professional experience using GitHub to manage source code and releases required.
• Professional experience with GitHub Actions and/or other Continuous Integration tooling required.
• Professional experience using Linux command line and bash scripting for server administration required.
• Professional experience using Terraform and Helm charts to deploy and manage cloud infrastructure across multiple environments required.
• Professional experience running production workloads on Kubernetes required. Experience with managed Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, etc) strongly preferred.
• Basic networking experience (e.g. subnets, NAT, firewall rules) required. Advanced networking experience with virtual private cloud (VPC), VPC peering, site-to-site VPN, and BGP preferred.
• Experience with administration and maintenance (management, upgrade, backup) of mission-critical systems, such as NFS file stores, database clusters, and authentication systems required.
• Profiency with at least 1 of the following programming languages: Ruby, R, and/or Python
• Ability to apply communication skills to convey ideas, results, and lead others.
• Ability to translate complex technical information to non-technical stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to strategically and independently recommend and determine approaches to completing projects, and managing processes where precedents are not available.
• Ability to lead and collaborate with colleagues and partners of varied backgrounds and experience.
• Strong ability to work independently on a multi-disciplinary team, using independent judgment required to plan, prioritize, and organize diversified workload.
• Affinity for a fast-paced work environment.
• Demonstrated experience leading and collaborating with colleagues and partners of varied backgrounds and experience; experience with global stakeholders preferred.
• Demonstrates self-awareness, cultural competency and inclusivity, and ability to work with colleagues and stakeholders across diverse cultures and backgrounds.

Due to the volume of employment applications and queries received, MethaneSAT, LLC is unable to respond to each application individually. Applicants will be contacted directly if selected as a candidate.

MethaneSAT, LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer