OPT Sre Engineer Jobs
SRE Engineer roles are among the most actively sponsored positions in tech, making them a strong fit for F-1 OPT students with backgrounds in computer science, systems engineering, or software development. Most employers filing for OPT candidates in this space require hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure, incident response, and automation tooling.
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Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) at TikTok combines software and systems engineering to build and run large-scale, massively distributed, and fault-tolerant systems. In our team, you’ll have the opportunity to manage the complex challenges of scale, while using expertise in coding, algorithms, complexity analysis, and large-scale system design. We embrace a culture of diversity, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving. We encourage close collaboration while promoting self-direction. Responsibilities:
- Develop and maintain automation procedures to maximize system efficiency and minimize human intervention.
- Work closely with software engineering teams to design, deploy and operate elements to ensure that systems are functionally robust.
- Ensure system scalability to handle growth in web traffic and data.
- Implement monitoring tools and set up metrics to keep track of system health and performance.
- Participate in on-call rotations, assist with incident management, and diagnose, resolve, and prevent production issues.
- Conduct performance tests to find and address system bottlenecks.
- Collaborate with teams across the organization to define Service Level Objectives (SLOs), Service Level Indicators (SLIs), and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
- Practice sustainable user support, incident response, and blameless postmortems.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field with 3+ years of experience
- Proven work experience as a Site Reliability Engineer, Systems Engineer, or similar software engineering role.
- Passionate about operational excellence through methodical automation and engineering processes using programming languages such as Go, Python and/or any other languages.
- Experience in network architecture, database modeling, cloud systems and large-scale distributed systems.
- Strong understanding of Linux operating systems and open-source technologies.
- Excellent problem-solving skills, strategic thinking, and a strong ability to debug complex systems.
- Exceptional communication skills and the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Knowledge of monitoring tools and methodologies (such as Prometheus, Grafana).
- Experience with containers and container orchestration platforms such as Docker, Kubernetes or equivalent.
ABOUT USDS
TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is dedicated to the safety and security of millions of Americans who create, discover, and connect with what they love on the apps we operate. The Joint Venture has been established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025. Our foundation is a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program we operate under defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm. We safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem, holding decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation. USDS Joint Venture helps ensure Americans can continue to express their creativity, discover new hobbies and interests, and build thriving communities and businesses on a global scale. On-site presence across teams allows the company to operate with greater speed, alignment, and agility — especially in areas like real-time decision-making, team development, and integrated execution. As such, the company is shifting from a hybrid work model to a fully in-person schedule up to 5 days a week.
WHY JOIN US
Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy – a mission we work towards every day. We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.
DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
TikTok is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.
USDS REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION
USDS is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/USDS-RA
JOB INFORMATION
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually) The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $177688 - $341734 annually. Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units. Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure). The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.
For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates: Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.
Responsibilities
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) at TikTok combines software and systems engineering to build and run large-scale, massively distributed, and fault-tolerant systems. In our team, you’ll have the opportunity to manage the complex challenges of scale, while using expertise in coding, algorithms, complexity analysis, and large-scale system design. We embrace a culture of diversity, intellectual curiosity, openness, and problem-solving. We encourage close collaboration while promoting self-direction. Responsibilities:
- Develop and maintain automation procedures to maximize system efficiency and minimize human intervention.
- Work closely with software engineering teams to design, deploy and operate elements to ensure that systems are functionally robust.
- Ensure system scalability to handle growth in web traffic and data.
- Implement monitoring tools and set up metrics to keep track of system health and performance.
- Participate in on-call rotations, assist with incident management, and diagnose, resolve, and prevent production issues.
- Conduct performance tests to find and address system bottlenecks.
- Collaborate with teams across the organization to define Service Level Objectives (SLOs), Service Level Indicators (SLIs), and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
- Practice sustainable user support, incident response, and blameless postmortems.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field with 3+ years of experience
- Proven work experience as a Site Reliability Engineer, Systems Engineer, or similar software engineering role.
- Passionate about operational excellence through methodical automation and engineering processes using programming languages such as Go, Python and/or any other languages.
- Experience in network architecture, database modeling, cloud systems and large-scale distributed systems.
- Strong understanding of Linux operating systems and open-source technologies.
- Excellent problem-solving skills, strategic thinking, and a strong ability to debug complex systems.
- Exceptional communication skills and the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Knowledge of monitoring tools and methodologies (such as Prometheus, Grafana).
- Experience with containers and container orchestration platforms such as Docker, Kubernetes or equivalent.
ABOUT USDS
TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is dedicated to the safety and security of millions of Americans who create, discover, and connect with what they love on the apps we operate. The Joint Venture has been established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025. Our foundation is a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program we operate under defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm. We safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem, holding decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation. USDS Joint Venture helps ensure Americans can continue to express their creativity, discover new hobbies and interests, and build thriving communities and businesses on a global scale. On-site presence across teams allows the company to operate with greater speed, alignment, and agility — especially in areas like real-time decision-making, team development, and integrated execution. As such, the company is shifting from a hybrid work model to a fully in-person schedule up to 5 days a week.
WHY JOIN US
Inspiring creativity is at the core of TikTok's mission. Our innovative product is built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and bring joy – a mission we work towards every day. We strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and innovate as one team. We're resilient and embrace challenges as they come. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.
DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
TikTok is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.
USDS REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION
USDS is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/USDS-RA
JOB INFORMATION
【For Pay Transparency】Compensation Description (Annually) The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $177688 - $341734 annually. Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units. Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure). The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.
For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates: Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and
3. Exercising sound judgment.
See all 71+ OPT Sre Engineer Jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new OPT Sre Engineer Jobs.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding OPT Sponsorship as a Sre Engineer
Lead with infrastructure experience, not just software skills
SRE hiring managers prioritize candidates who can demonstrate reliability engineering work, not general coding ability. Highlight specific projects involving uptime metrics, on-call rotations, or incident postmortems to show you understand production operations.
Target companies with existing OPT and H-1B sponsorship history
Larger tech firms and cloud-native companies sponsor SRE roles at higher rates than startups. Focus your search on employers with a documented history of sponsoring work visas, which signals familiarity with OPT authorization and willingness to sponsor H-1B visa afterward.
Certify in cloud platforms before applying
AWS, GCP, or Azure certifications materially strengthen SRE applications. They signal baseline infrastructure competency employers expect and reduce onboarding risk, which matters to sponsors weighing the added cost and effort of supporting an OPT authorization process.
Be explicit about your OPT timeline in early conversations
SRE roles often involve long onboarding ramps. Recruiters need to know your OPT end date and whether STEM extension applies so they can assess H-1B sponsorship timing. Raising this early avoids late-stage withdrawals after investing in technical rounds.
Showcase on-call and production ownership experience
Employers sponsoring SRE roles want evidence you can own services end-to-end, not just contribute to them. Document any experience you have managing production systems, responding to alerts, or leading reliability improvements, even from internships or university projects.
Use Migrate Mate to filter for OPT-friendly SRE openings
Searching broadly wastes time on roles that won't consider OPT candidates. Migrate Mate surfaces SRE positions from employers already open to sponsorship, so you can focus your effort on applications with a realistic path to authorization and eventual H-1B transition.
Sre Engineer OPT: Frequently Asked Questions
Can I work as an SRE Engineer on F-1 OPT?
Yes. SRE Engineer roles qualify for F-1 OPT authorization because the work is directly related to STEM fields like computer science, software engineering, and systems engineering. If your degree is in a qualifying STEM field, you're also eligible for the 24-month STEM OPT extension, giving you up to three years of total OPT work authorization in this role.
Does my SRE job need to be directly related to my degree?
Yes, OPT employment must be directly related to your field of study. For SRE roles, degrees in computer science, electrical engineering, information systems, or related STEM disciplines typically satisfy this requirement. If your degree is in a non-technical field, you should consult your DSO before accepting an SRE position to confirm the connection is defensible.
Which employers are most likely to sponsor SRE Engineers on OPT?
Large technology companies, cloud service providers, and well-funded growth-stage startups are the most active sponsors of SRE roles. Companies running complex distributed systems at scale, such as those in fintech, infrastructure software, and enterprise SaaS, tend to have established processes for supporting OPT and H-1B sponsorship. Migrate Mate lists SRE openings from employers already open to sponsoring international candidates.
Does SRE Engineer work qualify for the STEM OPT extension?
It depends on your degree, not the job title. If your degree appears on the STEM Designated Degree Program List maintained by ICE, you can apply for the 24-month STEM extension. Most computer science, computer engineering, and information technology degrees qualify. The extension requires your employer to enroll in E-Verify and submit a formal training plan with your DSO.
What happens to my OPT authorization if I switch SRE employers?
You can change employers on OPT without reapplying, but you must report the change to your DSO within 10 days. Your new SRE role still needs to be directly related to your degree field, and you cannot have gaps in employment exceeding 90 days on standard OPT. STEM OPT has stricter requirements, including a new I-983 training plan and employer E-Verify enrollment for each employer.