Team Manager, SRE

Why you:

The Team Manager will lead a team of Site Reliability Engineers, promoting the development and execution of quality services and continuous improvements in support of the company’s goal of providing superior client experience, promoting a culture of high performance and continuous learning and development.

The Team Manager will be responsible for the delivery of high-quality technical services and adherence to Pythian and client processes; lead their team through the implementation of customized client services; be an influential leader with talent in people management; Champion a culture of continuous improvement and development of team members.

As a first step in the application, you will be required to complete an online technical assessment so that we better understand your SRE technical skills.

What you will be doing:

• Lead and mentor a team of SRE to ensure technical excellence, timely resolution of incidents, and professional growth of team members.
• Drive strategic service delivery and operational excellence by optimizing workload distribution, automating toil, and ensuring the team exceeds strict SLA targets for high-profile enterprise clients.
• Act as the primary point of contact for critical escalations and severity-1 incidents, providing guidance and technical direction.
• Provide 24/7 management on-call support for the team.
• Conduct performance reviews and knowledge-sharing sessions to strengthen the team’s capabilities.
• Collaborate with management on performance metrics, process adherence, and resource planning.
• Sets specific goals and objectives for team members as part of Pythian’s goal planning program.
• Provides guidance to team members regarding training opportunities as part of Pythian’s self-directed training program.
• Meets regularly with team members for one-on-one sessions to disseminate information and gain feedback on opportunities for improvement.
• Reviews and reports on technical work completed by team members.
• Ensures team members’ adherence to Pythian and client processes.
• Works with the Director to complete resource planning to enable sustainable growth.
• Act as a strategic technical advisor to key enterprise clients, deeply understanding their business goals and tailoring Pythian’s SRE/DevOps services to drive their long-term infrastructure reliability and scalability.
• Works with the Director to disseminate information and direction from Pythian’s leadership teams.
• Foster a culture of psychological safety, encouraging proactive problem-solving, blameless post-mortems, and continuous innovation among senior technical staff.

What we need from you:

• A minimum of 3 years of previous experience leading and managing technical teams, specifically with a track record of guiding senior-level SRE and DevOps engineers.
• Proven experience managing complex, high-stakes enterprise client relationships. Ability to confidently interface with high-level client stakeholders and act as a trusted advisor.
• Exceptional verbal and written communication skills. Must be able to seamlessly translate complex technical challenges and strategic goals between C-level executives and highly technical engineering teams.
• Demonstrated resilience and composure under pressure. Strong crisis management and escalation handling skills, with a proven ability to steer teams through significant technical, operational, and client-facing challenges.
• Proven experience in SRE and/or DevOps with a strong SRE and DevOps mindset and a relentless focus on CI/CD orchestration, release management, deployment automation, scalability, toil reduction, and system reliability.
• Experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools, particularly Terraform.
• Strong knowledge of microservices architecture, containerization (Kubernetes, Docker), advanced networking concepts, and CI/CD pipeline tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions).
• Hands-on experience with Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), service mesh technologies, and Linux systems administration.

What you will receive:

• Love your career: Competitive total rewards package. Blog during work hours; take a day off and volunteer for your favorite charity.
• Love your work/life balance: Flexibly work remotely from your home, there’s no daily travel requirement to an office! All you need is a stable internet connection. 
• Love your coworkers: Collaborate with some of the best and brightest in the industry!
• Love your development: Hone your skills or learn new ones with our substantial training allowance; participate in professional development days, attend training, become certified, whatever you like! 
• Love your workspace: We give you all the equipment you need to work from home including a laptop with your choice of OS, and an annual budget to personalize your work environment!  
• Love yourself: Pythian cares about the health and well-being of our team. You will have an annual wellness budget to make yourself a priority (use it on gym memberships, massages, fitness and more). Additionally, you will receive a generous amount of paid vacation and sick days, as well as a day off to volunteer for your favourite charity.

Hiring Disclaimer

• The successful applicant will need to fulfill the requirements necessary to obtain a background check.
• Accommodations are available upon request for candidates taking part in any aspect of the selection process.

AI Disclaimer

Pythian may utilize Enterprise Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools or features throughout its hiring process. These tools help us manage high volumes of applications efficiently and may be employed to review applications, analyze resumes, and assist with other recruitment steps. While Pythian uses AI in its hiring process, it does not substitute for human judgment. Our Talent Acquisition Team reviews all AI-generated recommendations, and the system is subject to regular bias audits to ensure fairness and compliance with all applicable employment and human rights laws. All final hiring decisions are made by, and remain the responsibility of, human decision-makers. By applying for this position, you consent to Pythian’s use of these AI tools in the evaluation of your application. You have the right to request a human review of any solely AI-driven decision or to request an accommodation. Should you require further details regarding the processing of your data, please reach out to us.