Sre Engineer Jobs in California
Sre Engineer jobs in California sit at the center of one of the most active site reliability markets in the world, with demand concentrated in cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and platform engineering at every level from junior SRE through principal and staff engineer. The Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego are the primary hiring hubs, where employers such as Google, Meta, and Salesforce maintain large SRE organizations with consistent openings. Observability tooling, Kubernetes orchestration, and incident response automation are the most in-demand specialties across California right now. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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About Varda
Low Earth orbit is open for business. Varda is accelerating the development of commercial space infrastructure, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical reentry capsules. Varda's W-Series vehicles are built, designed, and operated by Varda in-house, including the pharmaceutical processing payloads, the capsules, the C-PICA heat shields, and the satellite buses.
From life-saving pharmaceuticals to more powerful fiber optics, there is a world of products used on Earth today that can only be manufactured in space. Varda is accelerating innovation in the orbital economy by creating both the products and infrastructure needed so space can directly benefit life on Earth. Our mission is to expand the economic bounds of humankind.
Our team is uniquely suited to accomplishing this goal, with leadership and staff comprised of veterans from SpaceX, Blue Origin, major pharmaceutical companies and Silicon Valley. Varda was founded in January 2021 by Will Bruey and Delian Asparouhov with significant backing from world class investors including Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Founders Fund, Caffeinated Capital, General Catalyst, and Also Capital.
Varda is headquartered in El Segundo, California, where we have offices and a production facility where our vehicles, equipment, and materials are built, integrated, and tested. Varda also has offices in Washington, DC and Huntsville, AL.
Join Varda, and work to create a bustling in-space ecosystem.
About This Role
At Varda Space Industries, we're pushing the boundaries of what's possible in space and materials science — and we're looking for bold engineers to help us get there. As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer, you'll be critical in building, scaling, and maintaining the infrastructure that powers our systems on Earth, in orbit, and everything in between.
We are looking for an experienced engineer with deep working knowledge of Kubernetes and containerized technologies. You are a hands-on operator and builder who applies first-principles thinking to both software delivery (DevOps) and production reliability (SRE), and thrives in complex, mission-critical environments.
In this role, you will:
- Solve challenging technical problems across a wide range of modern technologies.
- Apply a software engineering mindset to automate operations and improve system reliability, scalability, and resilience
- Design and build infrastructure that enables rapid development — from cloud-based services to embedded software running on spacecraft.
- Shape Varda's infrastructure strategy and drive operational excellence across containerized and modernized environments.
Responsibilities
- Deploy, maintain, and operate mission-critical applications and infrastructure supporting spacecraft and company-wide systems.
- Build and evolve Infrastructure as Code (IaC) frameworks using tools such as Terraform
- Implement and operate observability systems (metrics, logging, tracing) and actionable alerting.
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines to enable safe, repeatable, and rapid deployments.
- Partner with software and hardware engineers to deliver highly operable, reliable, and scalable systems and pipelines, ensuring they have the tools and infrastructure needed for rapid iteration.
- Identify, analyze, and resolve system bottlenecks and reliability risks; perform performance tuning and implement long-term stability improvements.
- Respond to and resolve production incidents; perform root cause analysis and drive corrective actions through blameless postmortems.
- Rotate through the team's on-call schedule to keep critical systems healthy and responsive.
- Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed
- Occasionally travel to customer sites and other Varda locations to troubleshoot, deploy, or test critical infrastructure.
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related STEM field with 5+ years of Site Reliability Engineering experience, or 7+ years of progressive experience in DevOps, SRE, or Systems Engineering in lieu of a degree.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using tools like Terraform to automate server provisioning and configuration management
- Experience operating Kubernetes or similar container orchestration platforms in production environments.
- Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, InfluxDB, or similar technologies.
- Knowledge of software-defined networking (VPC, Subnets, Firewalls, VPNs, etc.)
- Python, Bash, PowerShell (or similar) scripting experience
- Positive and strong communication skills, both written and oral
Preferred Skills and Experience
- Experience in provisioning and managing scalable Azure cloud infrastructure using native tools and best practices
- Experience implementing configuration management, provisioning, and workflow automation solutions via Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, and GitOps (e.g., Ansible, Salt, ArgoCD, etc).
- Strong understanding of Linux systems and container runtimes (e.g., containerd, Docker)
- Experience with GPU workloads or high-throughput computing.
- Hands-on experience operating and optimizing High Performance Computing (HPC) environments, including workload schedulers such as Slurm (e.g., queue/partition design, fair-share scheduling, and cluster resource management).
- Experience with hybrid environments (cloud + on-prem or edge systems)
- Experience debugging distributed systems at scale (network, storage, latency)
- Experience with databases and data modeling
Pay Range
- Site Reliability Engineer: $153,000.00 - $185,000.00/per year
- This role is on-site in El Segundo, CA
- Leveling and base salary are determined by job-related skills, education level, experience level, and job performance
- You will be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of stock options and/or long-term cash awards
ITAR Requirements
Varda, like all employers, must ensure that its employees working in the United States are lawfully authorized to work in the U.S. Additionally, our employees are exposed to and have access to certain export-controlled items. Because our employees are provided access to export-controlled items, our policy is to only hire "U.S. persons" who are permitted to have access to our technology without an export license.
"US person" means: U.S. citizen, U.S. lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3) (i.e., individual admitted to the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum).
E-Verify Statement
Varda Space Industries, Inc. participates in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security E-Verify program. The E-Verify program is an Internet-based employment eligibility verification system operated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Learn more about the E-Verify program.
E-Verify Notice Right To Work Notice
Read more Read more
Varda Space Industries is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Candidates and employees are always evaluated based on merit, qualifications, and performance. We will never discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, martial status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status.
About Varda
Low Earth orbit is open for business. Varda is accelerating the development of commercial space infrastructure, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical reentry capsules. Varda's W-Series vehicles are built, designed, and operated by Varda in-house, including the pharmaceutical processing payloads, the capsules, the C-PICA heat shields, and the satellite buses.
From life-saving pharmaceuticals to more powerful fiber optics, there is a world of products used on Earth today that can only be manufactured in space. Varda is accelerating innovation in the orbital economy by creating both the products and infrastructure needed so space can directly benefit life on Earth. Our mission is to expand the economic bounds of humankind.
Our team is uniquely suited to accomplishing this goal, with leadership and staff comprised of veterans from SpaceX, Blue Origin, major pharmaceutical companies and Silicon Valley. Varda was founded in January 2021 by Will Bruey and Delian Asparouhov with significant backing from world class investors including Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Founders Fund, Caffeinated Capital, General Catalyst, and Also Capital.
Varda is headquartered in El Segundo, California, where we have offices and a production facility where our vehicles, equipment, and materials are built, integrated, and tested. Varda also has offices in Washington, DC and Huntsville, AL.
Join Varda, and work to create a bustling in-space ecosystem.
About This Role
At Varda Space Industries, we're pushing the boundaries of what's possible in space and materials science — and we're looking for bold engineers to help us get there. As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer, you'll be critical in building, scaling, and maintaining the infrastructure that powers our systems on Earth, in orbit, and everything in between.
We are looking for an experienced engineer with deep working knowledge of Kubernetes and containerized technologies. You are a hands-on operator and builder who applies first-principles thinking to both software delivery (DevOps) and production reliability (SRE), and thrives in complex, mission-critical environments.
In this role, you will:
- Solve challenging technical problems across a wide range of modern technologies.
- Apply a software engineering mindset to automate operations and improve system reliability, scalability, and resilience
- Design and build infrastructure that enables rapid development — from cloud-based services to embedded software running on spacecraft.
- Shape Varda's infrastructure strategy and drive operational excellence across containerized and modernized environments.
Responsibilities
- Deploy, maintain, and operate mission-critical applications and infrastructure supporting spacecraft and company-wide systems.
- Build and evolve Infrastructure as Code (IaC) frameworks using tools such as Terraform
- Implement and operate observability systems (metrics, logging, tracing) and actionable alerting.
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines to enable safe, repeatable, and rapid deployments.
- Partner with software and hardware engineers to deliver highly operable, reliable, and scalable systems and pipelines, ensuring they have the tools and infrastructure needed for rapid iteration.
- Identify, analyze, and resolve system bottlenecks and reliability risks; perform performance tuning and implement long-term stability improvements.
- Respond to and resolve production incidents; perform root cause analysis and drive corrective actions through blameless postmortems.
- Rotate through the team's on-call schedule to keep critical systems healthy and responsive.
- Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed
- Occasionally travel to customer sites and other Varda locations to troubleshoot, deploy, or test critical infrastructure.
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related STEM field with 5+ years of Site Reliability Engineering experience, or 7+ years of progressive experience in DevOps, SRE, or Systems Engineering in lieu of a degree.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using tools like Terraform to automate server provisioning and configuration management
- Experience operating Kubernetes or similar container orchestration platforms in production environments.
- Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, InfluxDB, or similar technologies.
- Knowledge of software-defined networking (VPC, Subnets, Firewalls, VPNs, etc.)
- Python, Bash, PowerShell (or similar) scripting experience
- Positive and strong communication skills, both written and oral
Preferred Skills and Experience
- Experience in provisioning and managing scalable Azure cloud infrastructure using native tools and best practices
- Experience implementing configuration management, provisioning, and workflow automation solutions via Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, and GitOps (e.g., Ansible, Salt, ArgoCD, etc).
- Strong understanding of Linux systems and container runtimes (e.g., containerd, Docker)
- Experience with GPU workloads or high-throughput computing.
- Hands-on experience operating and optimizing High Performance Computing (HPC) environments, including workload schedulers such as Slurm (e.g., queue/partition design, fair-share scheduling, and cluster resource management).
- Experience with hybrid environments (cloud + on-prem or edge systems)
- Experience debugging distributed systems at scale (network, storage, latency)
- Experience with databases and data modeling
Pay Range
- Site Reliability Engineer: $153,000.00 - $185,000.00/per year
- This role is on-site in El Segundo, CA
- Leveling and base salary are determined by job-related skills, education level, experience level, and job performance
- You will be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of stock options and/or long-term cash awards
ITAR Requirements
Varda, like all employers, must ensure that its employees working in the United States are lawfully authorized to work in the U.S. Additionally, our employees are exposed to and have access to certain export-controlled items. Because our employees are provided access to export-controlled items, our policy is to only hire "U.S. persons" who are permitted to have access to our technology without an export license.
"US person" means: U.S. citizen, U.S. lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3) (i.e., individual admitted to the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum).
E-Verify Statement
Varda Space Industries, Inc. participates in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security E-Verify program. The E-Verify program is an Internet-based employment eligibility verification system operated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Learn more about the E-Verify program.
E-Verify Notice Right To Work Notice
Read more Read more
Varda Space Industries is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Candidates and employees are always evaluated based on merit, qualifications, and performance. We will never discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, martial status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status.
See All 213+ Sre Engineer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Sre Engineer JobsSre Engineer Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Sre Engineer Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
- Apple13
- SpaceX12
- Tesla11
- Google9
- ByteDance7
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software26
- Manufacturing3
- Consumer Goods3
- Aerospace & Defense3
- Electronics & Hardware3
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in sre engineer jobs across California.
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related technical field
- Hands-on experience with container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes or Docker
- Proficiency in at least one programming or scripting language such as Python, Go, or Java
- Experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code tooling
- Demonstrated ability to define and operate against SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets
- Familiarity with cloud platforms including Google Cloud, AWS, or Microsoft Azure
Sre Engineer Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a sre engineer in California?
There is no state-issued license required to work as a sre engineer in California. The standard path is a bachelor's degree in computer science or a closely related field, followed by engineering roles in software development or systems administration that build production operations experience. Many California employers also recognize candidates who come from DevOps or platform engineering backgrounds, particularly those who can demonstrate reliability work through open-source contributions or a documented on-call portfolio.
How much do sre engineers make in California?
Sre engineers in California earn a median of about $174,410 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $105,060 for the lowest 10% to over $272,670 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire sre engineers in California?
Employers hiring sre engineers in California right now include Apple, SpaceX, and Tesla, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. California's concentration of hyperscalers, enterprise software companies, and late-stage startups means SRE roles open continuously across the state, especially in the Bay Area tech corridor.
Which California cities have the most sre engineer jobs?
San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Clara have the most sre engineer openings in California. The Bay Area dominates because of its density of technology headquarters and cloud-native companies, while Los Angeles has grown steadily as media, fintech, and aerospace firms build out reliability engineering teams, and San Diego draws openings from defense contractors and biotech infrastructure groups.
Are there remote sre engineer jobs in California?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 65% of sre engineer openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of November 2026, reflecting how much of the work runs through cloud consoles and collaboration tools rather than on-site hardware. On-call rotation coverage and incident bridge participation are the parts of the role most likely to require a timezone or proximity commitment even in otherwise remote positions.
How can I get hired as a sre engineer in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is a junior or associate SRE role at a mid-size California technology company, where teams are more likely to invest in developing candidates who come from software engineering or systems administration backgrounds. Large Bay Area employers such as Google and Salesforce run structured new-grad engineering programs that include SRE rotations. Building a home lab with Kubernetes, publishing runbooks or postmortems publicly, and earning a cloud associate certification from Google or AWS gives early-career candidates a concrete edge in California screening.
Where can I find and apply to sre engineer jobs in California?
You can find and apply to sre engineer jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings tied to the state. Search the available roles, find the ones that match your experience and location, and apply directly from the listing.
See All 213+ Sre Engineer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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