Site Reliability Engineer Jobs in North Carolina

INTRODUCTION

Red Hat is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join the HCP Platform Engineering team, building and operating ROSA (Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS) Hosted Control Planes (HCP). ROSA HCP is Red Hat’s managed Kubernetes platform on AWS, built on a multi-tenant architecture where Red Hat operates shared control plane infrastructure while customers run workloads in their own AWS accounts.

This is not a standard engineering role. You will write and ship production-grade code, contribute to upstream open source projects and take ownership of production systems through on-call. All three are equally important.

You’ll work at the intersection of software engineering and production reliability on one of Red Hat’s most complex and high-scale platforms. The system spans multiple upstream open source projects and shared, multi-tenant infrastructure, requiring strong engineering judgment and end-to-end ownership.

The team is small, highly autonomous, and trusted to solve meaningful problems—from design through production.

Red Hat’s commitment to open source extends beyond our products into how we work. We foster a growth mindset and encourage engineers to thoughtfully and responsibly use AI to reduce toil, simplify workflows, and increase impact—allowing teams to focus on solving our customers’ hardest problems.

ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

What you will do

• Contribute production-grade software to upstream open source projects including HyperShift and OpenShift, owning features end-to-end from design and implementation through deployment and long-term lifecycle in production
• Bring a product and systems lens to architecture decisions, ensuring designs account for scalability, operability, and real-world production constraints from the start
• Operate as a full-stack systems owner, participating in on-call rotations and taking end-to-end responsibility for diagnosing, fixing, and preventing production issues
• Drive improvements that eliminate entire classes of failures by turning operational learning into durable product and platform enhancements
• Design and evolve observability (metrics, logs, traces) and SLOs as part of the software lifecycle, ensuring systems are measurable, debuggable, and resilient by design
• Raise the technical bar across the team through design docs, code review, pairing, and knowledge transfer during complex engineering work and incidents
• Work in a high-autonomy engineering team where you identify the most impactful problems and lead them from concept through implementation and production adoption
• Partner as a peer with product and platform engineering teams to influence architecture, challenge assumptions, and ensure systems are built for scale, reliability, and long-term operability
• Integrate AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code) into daily workflows for design, implementation, and debugging — using human judgment to maintain high engineering standards while increasing delivery velocity and system quality

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

What you will bring

We're looking for system builders — engineers who design, ship, and own with curiosity, range, and sharp engineering judgment. You go deep in your domain and broad enough across adjacent disciplines to make decisions with full context. You think in systems, communicate with precision, and treat AI as a force multiplier for your craft — not a substitute for your judgment.

• 4+ years of software engineering experience building and shipping production systems in cloud environments, including microservices, platforms, or distributed systems
• Strong proficiency in Go — you write production-quality code, review it critically, and ramp quickly on large, unfamiliar codebases
• Deep, hands-on Kubernetes experience from a builder's perspective: you've written operators, controllers, and CRDs in real-world, multi-tenant environments — not just operated clusters others built
• Solid understanding of AWS fundamentals (EC2, IAM, networking) and how Kubernetes platforms behave and scale on AWS
• Proven experience owning production systems under real SLOs, including participating in on-call and leading incident response with a focus on root cause and long-term fixes
• You ramp fast on complex, unfamiliar systems — forming a mental model and making meaningful contributions within weeks
• Highly self-directed builder mindset: you identify high-impact problems, propose solutions, and drive them end-to-end without waiting for direction
• Strong systems thinking — you naturally connect design decisions to their downstream impact on scalability, reliability, and operability in production
• Clear and effective communicator, able to collaborate with engineers on design, architecture, and tradeoffs

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Nice to have:

• Experience with HyperShift, OpenShift, or ROSA in production environments
• Familiarity with multi-tenant Kubernetes challenges such as noisy neighbors, control plane scaling, and fleet-level lifecycle management
• Contributions to open source projects, particularly in the Kubernetes ecosystem
• Experience designing and operating observability at scale (Prometheus, Grafana, Dynatrace, or similar) across large fleets
• Experience leveraging AI-assisted development tools (e.g., coding agents, AI-driven code review, spec-driven workflows) to accelerate development and improve quality

COMPENSATION

• Salary Range: $118,600.00 - $195,680.00. Actual offer will be based on your qualifications.

Red Hat determines compensation based on several factors including but not limited to job location, experience, applicable skills and training, external market value, and internal pay equity. Annual salary is one component of Red Hat’s compensation package. This position may also be eligible for bonus, commission, and/or equity. For positions with Remote-US locations, the actual salary range for the position may differ based on location but will be commensurate with job duties and relevant work experience.

ABOUT RED HAT

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Spread across 40+ countries, our associates work flexibly across work environments, from in-office, to office-flex, to fully remote, depending on the requirements of their role. Red Hatters are encouraged to bring their best ideas, no matter their title or tenure. We're a leader in open source because of our open and inclusive environment. We hire creative, passionate people ready to contribute their ideas, help solve complex problems, and make an impact.

BENEFITS

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Flexible Spending Account - healthcare and dependent care
• Health Savings Account - high deductible medical plan
• Retirement 401(k) with employer match
• Paid time off and holidays
• Paid parental leave plans for all new parents
• Leave benefits including disability, paid family medical leave, and paid military leave
• Additional benefits including employee stock purchase plan, family planning reimbursement, tuition reimbursement, transportation expense account, employee assistance program, and more!

Note: These benefits are only applicable to full time, permanent associates at Red Hat located in the United States.

INCLUSION AT RED HAT

Red Hat’s culture is built on the open source principles of transparency, collaboration, and inclusion, where the best ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. When this is realized, it empowers people from different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences to come together to share ideas, challenge the status quo, and drive innovation. Our aspiration is that everyone experiences this culture with equal opportunity and access, and that all voices are not only heard but also celebrated. We hope you will join our celebration, and we welcome and encourage applicants from all the beautiful dimensions that compose our global village.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY POLICY (EEO)

Red Hat is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and an affirmative action employer. We review applications for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, veteran status, genetic information, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, or any other basis prohibited by law.

Red Hat does not seek or accept unsolicited resumes or CVs from recruitment agencies. We are not responsible for, and will not pay, any fees, commissions, or any other payment related to unsolicited resumes or CVs except as required in a written contract between Red Hat and the recruitment agency or party requesting payment of a fee.

Red Hat supports individuals with disabilities and provides reasonable accommodations to job applicants. If you need assistance completing our online job application, email application-assistance@redhat.com. General inquiries, such as those regarding the status of a job application, will not receive a reply.