Operations Engineer Visa Sponsorship Jobs in California
Operations engineer roles in California span semiconductor manufacturing, cloud infrastructure, and defense contracting, with major employers like Intel, Broadcom, Lockheed Martin, and Amazon operating across Silicon Valley, San Diego, and Los Angeles. California's concentration of tech and aerospace employers makes it one of the most active states for operations engineer visa sponsorship.
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Get Access To All JobsABOUT YOU
We are looking for an Operations Engineer who is technically curious, detail-oriented, a strong communicator, and proactive to join our Global Technical Operations (GTO) team. The best candidate will be someone who thrives in a fast-paced, highly collaborative, and exceptionally dynamic setting and is excited to monitor and investigate production issues across a global platform, help improve how we detect and respond to incidents, analyze trends and patterns in production data, and contribute to better communication with partners and stakeholders during incidents. Strong troubleshooting skills, observability platform experience, and scripting ability are essential, along with experience in SRE, DevOps, production operations, or NOC environments supporting high-availability platforms (payments, e-commerce, SaaS, or gaming). The ability to communicate clearly and effectively in English — both written and verbal — when writing incident updates, shift handoffs, and status page communications will be key to your success in this role. If you're passionate about keeping critical systems running and continuously improving operational processes and love being the first to spot issues and the one who drives them to resolution for game developers and players worldwide, we would love to hear from you!
About us
Xsolla is a global commerce company with robust tools and services to help developers solve the inherent challenges of the video game industry. From indie to AAA, companies partner with Xsolla to help them fund, distribute, market, and monetize their games. Grounded in the belief in the future of video games, Xsolla is resolute in the mission to bring opportunities together, and continually make new resources available to creators. Headquartered and incorporated in Los Angeles, California, Xsolla operates as the merchant of record and has helped over 1,500+ game developers to reach more players and grow their businesses around the world. With more paths to profits and ways to win, developers have all the things needed to enjoy the game.
Responsibilities
-
Serve as the primary dashboard monitor during your shift — continuously watch the GTO Operational Dashboard in Datadog, detect anomalies by correlating signals across APM, logs, metrics, synthetic tests, and Real User Monitoring, and determine whether alerts warrant an incident ticket or can be resolved through immediate investigation.
-
Triage and investigate production incidents — create incident tickets in JIRA Service Management, perform initial technical investigation using Datadog (traces, logs, infrastructure and application metrics), determine blast radius and likely root cause domain, and route to the correct team (Product SRE, Infrastructure SRE, or Engineering) using the smart routing model.
-
Own lower-severity incidents end-to-end from detection through resolution — diagnose, execute runbook procedures, and resolve without escalation where possible. Escalate promptly when an incident is unresolved within defined thresholds or requires a code-level fix.
-
Support the TSO Lead during major incidents as the technical right hand in the war room — surface real-time data (error rates, impact scope, deployment history, related alerts), maintain the incident ticket with live timeline entries and linked evidence, and execute mitigation actions as directed.
-
Draft incident communications under TSO Lead direction, including internal Slack updates, stakeholder notifications, and customer-facing status page updates (status.xsolla.com). Support clear, timely communication throughout the incident lifecycle.
-
During non-incident periods, analyze incident trends, recurring issues, and production bugs — compile data from Datadog, JIRA, and Slack, identify patterns, and contribute findings to regular reports for product and engineering teams.
-
Compile incident timelines and draft initial PIR documents for Post-Incident Review preparation. Track PIR action items post-session and flag overdue items to the TSO Lead.
-
Build and maintain operational automation (alert enrichment scripts, incident templates, Slack workflows, dashboard widgets) and contribute to runbook development — documenting new resolution procedures so they can be repeated by any Operations Engineer on any shift.
-
Conduct structured shift handoffs covering active incidents, at-risk services, upcoming deployments, and follow-up items. Participate in knowledge transfer sessions with SREs to continuously expand independent resolution capability.
-
Cover for the TSO Lead during vacations, absences, or emergencies — including severity classification, escalation decisions, stakeholder communications, and basic Incident Commander functions.
-
Publish health reports of critical apps periodically.
Qualifications and Skills
-
4+ years of experience in SRE, DevOps, production operations, NOC, or technical operations in a high-availability environment. Experience with platforms that handle payments, e-commerce, SaaS, or gaming workloads is preferred.
-
Strong troubleshooting and investigation skills — ability to take an alert or user-reported symptom and methodically trace it through the stack: application logs, APM traces, infrastructure metrics, database queries, and network paths.
-
Hands-on experience with Datadog (or equivalent observability platform: Grafana, Splunk, New Relic, Elastic) — navigating APM, building log queries, reading infrastructure dashboards, interpreting SLO burn rates, and configuring monitors and alerts.
-
Proficiency in at least one scripting language: Python, Go, or Bash. You will write automation scripts, build operational tooling, and work with APIs.
-
Clear written and verbal communication skills in English — ability to write incident tickets, investigation notes, Slack updates, shift handoff reports, status page communications, and PIR drafts that are clear, concise, and useful to both technical and non-technical audiences.
-
Working knowledge of Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure (GCP preferred, AWS/Azure acceptable) — understanding of pods, deployments, services, ingress, node health, and how to investigate Kubernetes-related production issues.
-
Understanding of SLOs, error budgets, and burn-rate alerting — knowing what a multi-window burn-rate alert means, how error budgets deplete, and how SLO breaches translate into incident severity.
-
Experience with incident management tooling: JIRA or JIRA Service Management, PagerDuty or OpsGenie, Slack, and Confluence.
-
Experience with or strong interest in AI/ML-assisted operations: anomaly detection, alert correlation, predictive monitoring, or automated remediation.
-
Comfort with 24x7 shift-based operations as part of a follow-the-sun model with handoff overlaps. Weekend on-call (rotating) is required.
Nice to Have
-
Experience in the gaming, payments, or fintech industry — particularly environments where transaction processing, checkout flows, or player-facing services must meet strict uptime requirements.
-
Familiarity with Datadog Service Catalog, synthetic monitoring, and RUM; exposure to database operations (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka); and experience with CI/CD pipelines and deployment tooling (GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Helm).
-
JIRA Service Management administration experience (workflows, automation rules, SLA timers) or ITIL Foundation certification — practical experience matters more than credentials.
The duties and responsibilities of this position may evolve over time to support the organization's goals and individual growth. This job description is intended to outline the general nature and level of work being performed and is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required. By submitting your application, you consent to Xsolla conducting background checks, where permitted by law, after the final interview stage. All checks will comply with local regulations, and your information will be handled confidentially. Xsolla takes your privacy seriously and will not sell or externally distribute any personal data received during the hiring process. In accordance with applicable data protection laws, Xsolla is committed to protecting your personal information and respecting your privacy.
For any inquiries related to data privacy, please contact: careers@xsolla.com
For more vacancies: Careers | Xsolla
ABOUT YOU
We are looking for an Operations Engineer who is technically curious, detail-oriented, a strong communicator, and proactive to join our Global Technical Operations (GTO) team. The best candidate will be someone who thrives in a fast-paced, highly collaborative, and exceptionally dynamic setting and is excited to monitor and investigate production issues across a global platform, help improve how we detect and respond to incidents, analyze trends and patterns in production data, and contribute to better communication with partners and stakeholders during incidents. Strong troubleshooting skills, observability platform experience, and scripting ability are essential, along with experience in SRE, DevOps, production operations, or NOC environments supporting high-availability platforms (payments, e-commerce, SaaS, or gaming). The ability to communicate clearly and effectively in English — both written and verbal — when writing incident updates, shift handoffs, and status page communications will be key to your success in this role. If you're passionate about keeping critical systems running and continuously improving operational processes and love being the first to spot issues and the one who drives them to resolution for game developers and players worldwide, we would love to hear from you!
About us
Xsolla is a global commerce company with robust tools and services to help developers solve the inherent challenges of the video game industry. From indie to AAA, companies partner with Xsolla to help them fund, distribute, market, and monetize their games. Grounded in the belief in the future of video games, Xsolla is resolute in the mission to bring opportunities together, and continually make new resources available to creators. Headquartered and incorporated in Los Angeles, California, Xsolla operates as the merchant of record and has helped over 1,500+ game developers to reach more players and grow their businesses around the world. With more paths to profits and ways to win, developers have all the things needed to enjoy the game.
Responsibilities
-
Serve as the primary dashboard monitor during your shift — continuously watch the GTO Operational Dashboard in Datadog, detect anomalies by correlating signals across APM, logs, metrics, synthetic tests, and Real User Monitoring, and determine whether alerts warrant an incident ticket or can be resolved through immediate investigation.
-
Triage and investigate production incidents — create incident tickets in JIRA Service Management, perform initial technical investigation using Datadog (traces, logs, infrastructure and application metrics), determine blast radius and likely root cause domain, and route to the correct team (Product SRE, Infrastructure SRE, or Engineering) using the smart routing model.
-
Own lower-severity incidents end-to-end from detection through resolution — diagnose, execute runbook procedures, and resolve without escalation where possible. Escalate promptly when an incident is unresolved within defined thresholds or requires a code-level fix.
-
Support the TSO Lead during major incidents as the technical right hand in the war room — surface real-time data (error rates, impact scope, deployment history, related alerts), maintain the incident ticket with live timeline entries and linked evidence, and execute mitigation actions as directed.
-
Draft incident communications under TSO Lead direction, including internal Slack updates, stakeholder notifications, and customer-facing status page updates (status.xsolla.com). Support clear, timely communication throughout the incident lifecycle.
-
During non-incident periods, analyze incident trends, recurring issues, and production bugs — compile data from Datadog, JIRA, and Slack, identify patterns, and contribute findings to regular reports for product and engineering teams.
-
Compile incident timelines and draft initial PIR documents for Post-Incident Review preparation. Track PIR action items post-session and flag overdue items to the TSO Lead.
-
Build and maintain operational automation (alert enrichment scripts, incident templates, Slack workflows, dashboard widgets) and contribute to runbook development — documenting new resolution procedures so they can be repeated by any Operations Engineer on any shift.
-
Conduct structured shift handoffs covering active incidents, at-risk services, upcoming deployments, and follow-up items. Participate in knowledge transfer sessions with SREs to continuously expand independent resolution capability.
-
Cover for the TSO Lead during vacations, absences, or emergencies — including severity classification, escalation decisions, stakeholder communications, and basic Incident Commander functions.
-
Publish health reports of critical apps periodically.
Qualifications and Skills
-
4+ years of experience in SRE, DevOps, production operations, NOC, or technical operations in a high-availability environment. Experience with platforms that handle payments, e-commerce, SaaS, or gaming workloads is preferred.
-
Strong troubleshooting and investigation skills — ability to take an alert or user-reported symptom and methodically trace it through the stack: application logs, APM traces, infrastructure metrics, database queries, and network paths.
-
Hands-on experience with Datadog (or equivalent observability platform: Grafana, Splunk, New Relic, Elastic) — navigating APM, building log queries, reading infrastructure dashboards, interpreting SLO burn rates, and configuring monitors and alerts.
-
Proficiency in at least one scripting language: Python, Go, or Bash. You will write automation scripts, build operational tooling, and work with APIs.
-
Clear written and verbal communication skills in English — ability to write incident tickets, investigation notes, Slack updates, shift handoff reports, status page communications, and PIR drafts that are clear, concise, and useful to both technical and non-technical audiences.
-
Working knowledge of Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure (GCP preferred, AWS/Azure acceptable) — understanding of pods, deployments, services, ingress, node health, and how to investigate Kubernetes-related production issues.
-
Understanding of SLOs, error budgets, and burn-rate alerting — knowing what a multi-window burn-rate alert means, how error budgets deplete, and how SLO breaches translate into incident severity.
-
Experience with incident management tooling: JIRA or JIRA Service Management, PagerDuty or OpsGenie, Slack, and Confluence.
-
Experience with or strong interest in AI/ML-assisted operations: anomaly detection, alert correlation, predictive monitoring, or automated remediation.
-
Comfort with 24x7 shift-based operations as part of a follow-the-sun model with handoff overlaps. Weekend on-call (rotating) is required.
Nice to Have
-
Experience in the gaming, payments, or fintech industry — particularly environments where transaction processing, checkout flows, or player-facing services must meet strict uptime requirements.
-
Familiarity with Datadog Service Catalog, synthetic monitoring, and RUM; exposure to database operations (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka); and experience with CI/CD pipelines and deployment tooling (GitLab CI, ArgoCD, Helm).
-
JIRA Service Management administration experience (workflows, automation rules, SLA timers) or ITIL Foundation certification — practical experience matters more than credentials.
The duties and responsibilities of this position may evolve over time to support the organization's goals and individual growth. This job description is intended to outline the general nature and level of work being performed and is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required. By submitting your application, you consent to Xsolla conducting background checks, where permitted by law, after the final interview stage. All checks will comply with local regulations, and your information will be handled confidentially. Xsolla takes your privacy seriously and will not sell or externally distribute any personal data received during the hiring process. In accordance with applicable data protection laws, Xsolla is committed to protecting your personal information and respecting your privacy.
For any inquiries related to data privacy, please contact: careers@xsolla.com
For more vacancies: Careers | Xsolla
Operations Engineer Job Roles in California
See all 1,448+ Operations Engineer Jobs in California
Sign up for free to filter by visa type, set job alerts, and find employers with verified sponsorship history.
Search Operations Engineer Jobs in CaliforniaOperations Engineer Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies sponsor visas for operations engineers in California?
Large technology and semiconductor companies are among the most active sponsors for operations engineers in California. Intel and Broadcom in the South Bay, Amazon Web Services and Google in the greater San Francisco area, and defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in Los Angeles and San Diego have consistent records of H-1B sponsorship for operations-focused roles. Established firms with dedicated HR and immigration infrastructure tend to be more reliable sponsors than smaller startups.
Which visa types are most common for operations engineer roles in California?
The H-1B is the most common visa category for operations engineers in California, as the role typically requires at minimum a bachelor's degree in industrial, mechanical, or systems engineering, satisfying the specialty occupation standard. Candidates with extraordinary achievements may qualify for the O-1A. Canadian and Mexican nationals in qualifying engineering subspecialties may pursue the TN visa, which does not require a lottery and can be issued at the border.
How to find operations engineer visa sponsorship jobs in California?
Migrate Mate filters job listings specifically to employers willing to sponsor visas, so you can search operations engineer roles in California without sorting through postings that exclude international candidates. Filtering by California surfaces openings across Silicon Valley, San Diego, and Los Angeles from employers with documented sponsorship histories. Creating a profile on Migrate Mate also allows you to track new postings as they appear for this role in the state.
Which cities in California have the most operations engineer sponsorship jobs?
San Jose and the broader Silicon Valley corridor generate the highest volume of operations engineer sponsorship opportunities in California, driven by semiconductor and cloud infrastructure companies. San Diego has a strong cluster tied to defense, biotech manufacturing, and telecommunications hardware. Los Angeles is a growing hub for aerospace and advanced manufacturing operations roles. Sacramento and Fresno see smaller but consistent demand from agricultural technology and utilities operations employers.
Are there any California-specific considerations for operations engineer visa sponsorship?
California's prevailing wage requirements under H-1B rules are shaped by the high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, meaning employer wage obligations for operations engineers in these metros are among the highest in the country. California also has strong engineering pipelines from UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC San Diego, which means competition for sponsored roles is significant. Employers in regulated industries like defense may also require candidates to be eligible for a security clearance, which can affect visa pathway options.
What is the prevailing wage for sponsored operations engineer jobs in California?
U.S. employers sponsoring a visa must pay at least the prevailing wage, which is what workers in the same role, area, and experience level typically earn. The Department of Labor sets this rate to make sure companies aren't hiring foreign workers simply because they'd accept lower pay than a U.S. worker. It varies by job title, location, and experience. You can look up current prevailing wage rates for any occupation and location using the OFLC Wage Search page.
See which operations engineer employers are hiring and sponsoring visas in California right now.
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