DevOps/SRE Leader

About Bitkernel

Bitkernel Technology Inc. is redefining how the world experiences digital video. With a proven track record of innovation, we're on a mission to revolutionize streaming technology and build complete content ecosystems. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with a growing office in Vancouver, B.C., we're building our future in North America.

Powered by our groundbreaking platform, Goose, we're creating a next-generation self-serve SaaS solution that enables content creators, broadcasters, and media companies to launch and scale OTT streaming services across Android, iOS, Web, and SmartTV platforms.

Why Join Bitkernel?

At Bitkernel, you'll experience the energy of a startup with the stability of an established product—and the opportunity to make a global impact. You'll help shape major technical innovations, collaborate with visionary leaders, and solve complex, global-scale challenges backed by long-term R&D investment.

We thrive on empathy, innovation, and continuous learning. Our team is made up of curious, strategic thinkers who combine deep technical expertise with emotional intelligence and a collaborative spirit across cultures and disciplines.

Join us to build, innovate, and grow as we redefine how the world experiences digital video.

BitKernel DNA (is it in you?)

Startup Hustle: You thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments with a hands-on, problem-solving attitude.

Boundary-Breaking Vision: You challenge conventions to pioneer innovative, world-class user interfaces.

AI-Enhanced Innovation: You harness AI to supercharge development workflows and push the boundaries of what's possible.

Role Overview

The DevOps Manager is a strategic and technical leader responsible for driving operational excellence across infrastructure and engineering. This role oversees DevOps strategy, team management, and the optimization of CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and security to ensure seamless integration between development and operations. The ideal candidate combines strong technical acumen with leadership and business alignment, ensuring Goose's platform remains reliable, scalable, and secure. They will build a high-performing team that fosters automation, collaboration, and continuous improvement while representing the DevOps perspective with internal stakeholders and external partners.

What You'll Own
DevOps Strategy and Planning

• Formulate the company's overall DevOps direction and strategies for deployment, monitoring, and automation.
• Research operational technologies and industry trends to provide competitive infrastructure advantages.
• Participate in decision-making to ensure DevOps investments align with long-term goals.
• Develop and execute the DevOps vision, strategy, and roadmap in alignment with business objectives.
• Identify and evaluate emerging technologies (e.g., containerization, IaC) to inform future efforts.

Infrastructure & Platform Engineering

• Oversee design, provisioning, and management of multi-cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP) using Terraform, Pulumi, and Crossplane.
• Lead Kubernetes-based orchestration strategies for scalable, resilient, and globally distributed systems.
• Define policies for disaster recovery, high availability, and cost optimization across environments.
• Drive adoption of GitOps workflows and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles across the engineering organization.

Automation & CI/CD

• Architect and maintain automated CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitLab CI, or ArgoCD.
• Standardize environment provisioning and deployment automation across dev, staging, and production.
• Implement progressive delivery patterns (blue/green, canary, feature flags) to increase release confidence.

Observability, Security & Reliability

• Enhance observability using Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, and Datadog.
• Establish alerting, SLO/SLI dashboards, and operational runbooks to maintain system health.
• Partner with Security to embed DevSecOps practices, ensuring compliance, encryption, and secrets management.
• Manage on-call rotations, incident response, and postmortem reviews to improve MTTR and platform resilience.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Build and mentor a high-performing team of DevOps and Site Reliability Engineers.
• Collaborate closely with backend, QA, and product engineering leaders to align infrastructure goals with delivery objectives.
• Foster a culture of automation, reliability, and continuous improvement.
• Participate in architectural reviews and capacity planning for platform evolution.

Key Competencies
Technical Leadership

• Deep expertise in cloud infrastructure, container orchestration, and automation pipelines (Kubernetes, Terraform, Pulumi, ArgoCD).
• Strong foundation in Linux systems, network management, and CI/CD pipelines with a focus on reliability, scalability, and security.
• Experienced in observability and monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog) to maintain uptime and service performance.
• Skilled in infrastructure as code (IaC) and GitOps practices, driving consistency across environments.
• Strong understanding of core internet and cloud concepts including: API performance, bandwidth optimization, builds, releases, version control, and containerized application delivery.

Strategic & Operational Planning

• Defines and executes DevOps roadmaps aligned with product and business goals.
• Anticipates scaling, performance, and reliability needs across multi-cloud environments.
• Evaluates emerging tools and practices (AIOps, service mesh, policy-as-code) to improve operational maturity and efficiency.

Team Development & Leadership

• Builds and mentors a high-performing DevOps team, emphasizing accountability, automation, and continuous improvement.
• Establishes clear roles, objectives, and success metrics to drive performance.
• Promotes cross-training and technical sharing to enhance team capability and resilience.

Continuous Improvement & Problem Solving

• Leads incident response, root cause analysis, and post-mortem processes to strengthen platform resilience.
• Champions a culture of automation, innovation, and proactive problem-solving.
• Applies data-driven insights to reduce downtime, improve deployment velocity, and enhance developer experience.

Communication & Collaboration

• Acts as the bridge between engineering, product, and operations, ensuring DevOps initiatives align with business objectives.
• Communicates priorities, risks, and progress effectively to executives and cross-functional teams.
• Influences organizational change by evangelizing best practices and cultivating a shared reliability mindset.

What We Require for this Role

• 8+ years of combined DevOps and SRE experience, with 3+ years in a leadership role managing teams.
• Top-Tier Education: You hold a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field from a 4-yr accredited institution globally ranked in the top 500 universities.
• Proven experience managing Kubernetes and IaC-based multi-cloud infrastructure.
• Hands-on expertise in Terraform, Pulumi, or Crossplane and CI/CD systems (ArgoCD, Jenkins, GitLab).
• Strong command of Linux systems, Docker, and GitOps methodologies.
• Proficiency with monitoring/alerting stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog).
• Strong knowledge of networking fundamentals, CDN configurations, and container security.
• Excellent communication and team leadership skills, with the ability to align cross-functional teams.
• A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field is required.

Bonus Points for Candidates Who Have...

• Experience with service mesh (Istio, Linkerd, or Cilium) and policy frameworks (OPA/Kyverno).
• Familiarity with multimedia streaming architectures (HLS/DASH, CDN delivery).
• Exposure to AI-enhanced operations or AIOps.
• Experience with global deployment scaling for OTT or SaaS platforms.

The pay range for this role is:

160, ,000 USD per year(HQ - Austin)

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