Role Overview:
This isn't a "keep the lights on" SRE role. This is a strategic, high-impact opportunity to build the nervous system for a platform that transforms how networks of satellites, ground stations, and fleets are interconnected and orchestrated. You will be building the core observability stack that ensures the reliability of systems critical to the operation of satellite megaconstellations and missions to deep space.
This is a greenfield/brownfield opportunity. You will be a trusted expert, helping to define and implement the strategy and building the tools that empower our engineers. You will support the roadmap to mature our observability stack, moving from cloud-native tools to a robust, scalable, and insightful platform built on best-in-class technologies (Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, etc.). If you are an SRE who thrives on platform-building challenges and wants to be relied upon to build a production-grade observability stack from the ground up, this role is for you.
Note: this role includes on-call responsibilities.
Key Responsibilities:
- Help design and build Aalyria's centralized observability platform, integrating and scaling tools for metrics (e.g. Prometheus), logging (e.g. Loki), and distributed tracing (e.g. Tempo/OpenTelemetry).
- Define, implement, and manage a robust framework of Service Level Objectives (SLOs), Service Level Indicators (SLIs), and error budgets for our core products, ensuring we are launch-ready.
- Partner with SWEs to implement observability best practices, develop standard templates and documentation, and configure tooling (e.g., OpenTelemetry libraries).
- Automate the deployment, scaling, and management of the entire observability stack using Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform) and GitOps principles (e.g. ArgoCD).
- Partner closely with the core infrastructure team to ensure deep visibility into our Kubernetes clusters and underlying GCP and AWS environments.
- Develop and lead the company's monitoring, alerting, and incident response strategy, driving a culture of proactive reliability and blameless post-mortems.
Required Qualifications:
- 4+ years of experience in an SRE or platform engineering role, with a focus on observability for large-scale, distributed compute or network systems.
- Deep, hands-on expertise building, scaling, and managing observability platforms (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Loki/ELK, OpenTelemetry, Tempo/Jaeger, Honeycomb, etc.). You have proven experience using these tools to support performance analysis and debugging of complex distributed systems.
- Strong production-level experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Kubernetes.
- Experience using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and GitOps principles (e.g., ArgoCD).
- Proficiency in a systems programming language, with a strong preference for Go and Python for debugging and writing tooling.
- Demonstrable experience defining, implementing, and managing SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets for production services for high availability distributed systems.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience operating a multi-cloud environment, specifically GCP and AWS.
- Hands-on experience with GitLab CI for CI/CD pipelines.
- Working knowledge of service mesh technologies such as Istio or Linkerd.
- Familiarity with instrumenting applications written in Go and C++.
- An active Secret clearance, or higher, is preferred for this position.
- Experience with JVM observability (tuning, monitoring) for Java-based applications.
What We Offer:
- Competitive salary benchmarked to UK aerospace and defence technology market rates
- Equity participation — share in Aalyria's growth at an early stage
- Comprehensive benefits including pension, private health insurance, and generous annual leave
- Flexible and hybrid working arrangements
- The opportunity to work on genuinely novel technology with real-world operational impact across national security, commercial satellite, and deep-space programmes
- A collaborative, low-hierarchy team environment with direct exposure to technical leadership and customers
Equal Opportunity Employer Statement:
Aalyria Technologies is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to building an inclusive workplace and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, or any other protected characteristic under UK law.
Aalyria Technologies operates in sectors subject to UK export control regulations. Candidates may be asked to confirm their eligibility to access export-controlled technology as part of the hiring process.
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