We are a diverse, fully distributed team from around the world, working toward our shared vision to raise the standard of trust online.
Join us as a remote Director, Site Reliability Engineering, to lead and expand our team of engineers, who are building and maintaining world-class infrastructure to meet the needs of millions of users.
At DuckDuckGo, we currently serve 70+ million search queries a day (nearly doubling each year), anonymously leverage over 400 upstream sources for results, and serve 1PB of proxied traffic per day.
As part of our growing team, your role will be dedicated to improving and scaling the reliability of our end-to-end infrastructure, where you'll dive deep into complex operational challenges including software, systems, automation, and process analysis.
We empower our team to be self-directed and self-motivated in their work. If you'd thrive in that environment and our core values resonate with you -- build trust, question assumptions, and validate direction -- you'll fit right in!
What you will do:
Lead and advise high-complexity projects from scoping to production.Scale our SRE team by helping to hire and mentor engineers and emerging leaders.Assist in determining the future technical direction of our deployment, with a focus on improving reliability and performance.Providetechnicaldirection and guidance to members of the team.Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders (engineering, business, product) in both tactical and strategic capacities.Work closely with search engineers to triage production issues and determine appropriate remediation, including code changes and performance considerations.Apply pragmatic reasoning to navigate complex challengesand competing interests.Participate in the full development cycle: technical design, implementation, QA, review, and release.What we are looking for:
Significant experience tackling reliability challenges of large-scale deployments and high-traffic, distributed systems.Experience managing a team of SREs or DevOps Engineers.Experience leading production troubleshooting of distributed systems, code, storage, networking, and operating systems.Previous participation in a 24x7, on-call rotation for large-scale deployment.Moderate to advanced programming experience, preferably in a high-level language like Perl or Python.Strong organizational skills and a keen eye for detail.Effective project management skills, with a history of successfully launched projects carried from inception to production.Strong verbal and written skills in communicating recommendations and decisions.Ability to provide feedback to an array of stakeholders, both internal and external.Other things to know:
While we leverage specific job titles for hiring purposes, we do not use them internally. Instead, we follow our own professional levels, with expectations for each level clearly defined across several dimensions.We are a small, remote team distributed across time zones, and we rely on a variety of communication tools throughout the day. You should feel comfortable with the intricacies of this type of work situation.Sometimes we meet up! While all company travel is currently on hold, once it is deemed safe to resume, expect to travel at least two times a year: once for our all-hands meetup and again for a team retreat (each ~4-5 days).We believe in a focused approach to collaboration, where individual team members work on a single top priority at a time, each supporting larger, company-wide objectives. This philosophy serves to impact our vision to raise the standard of trust online.Our work philosophy centers on empowered project management. All team members have opportunities to run projects.Transparency supports individual and team success at DuckDuckGo. We encourage everyone to participate in areas of interest throughout the company. Anyone and everyone can (and should) ask questions and offer feedback about our products and internal projects.We strive to exemplify our values (build trust, question assumptions, and validate direction) in everything we do.While we offer a flexible work arrangement with no core hours, expect an average commitment of 40 hours per week.We support professional development of our team members through career advisory and a learning stipend, reinforcing our culture of growth and skill-building.Other reasons to love working at DuckDuckGo:
- Flexible vacation and sick leave practices
- Flexible work schedule
- Company-wide hack days
- Company and team meetups
- Open participation in company strategy
- Family leave policy
- Co-working reimbursement
- Hardware and office setup benefits
- Wellness and learning benefits
- Charitable donation matching
- US health benefits
- US 401k
- "Use good judgment" approach to company policies
DuckDuckGo does not work with any recruiting agencies or services. Instead, we work with each candidate one-on-one throughout a unique hiring process that we've built to reflect our company culture.
DuckDuckGo provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.
If you think you might thrive in this environment, we would love to hear from you!
Please note that:
A successful candidate will be subject to a background check.By applying for this role, you confirm that information submitted is accurate and that you understand falsification is cause for denial of employment or termination.