Role Description:
Job Summary
The core premise for SRE lies in treating operations as a software problem where operations are concerned with addressing availability, scalability, latency and efficiency for Booking.com's systems & services. At its core the SRE is tasked with engineering efforts to solve complex problems, requiring a strong aptitude to develop software systems that will minimize (i.e. through automation) human labor and increase system & service reliability. A Booking Reliability Engineering team has full vertical ownership of a system, from the server configuration up to the application interfaces. This enables the team to have full control on a service, and avoid situations where different teams own different areas of a system and some parts fall between the cracks. SRE can wear several hats; at times an SRE might be part of the product development team themselves and other times will act as a consultant to support a product development team to implement the Booking Reliability Engineering best practices. As systems & services grow in size and complexity so too does the operational overhead. It is a fundamental principle of SRE to break this relationship between operational toil, system size and complexity. This also requires the team to limit operations work enforcing engineering development efforts that is at the heart of Booking Reliability Engineering. Ultimately the fundamental software engineering skills coupled with strong systems and networking knowledge will guide the SRE to create more reliable systems & services that are highly available, which scales with growth and that is efficient and latency sensitive.
Key Responsibilities
Building software applications Is responsible to build software applications by using relevant development languages and applying knowledge of systems, services and tools appropriate for the business areaIs responsible to write readable and reusable code by applying standard patterns and using standard librariesIs responsible to refactor and simplify code by introducing design patterns when necessaryIs responsible to ensure the quality of the application by following standard testing techniques and methods that adhere to the test strategyIs responsible to maintain data security, integrity and quality by effectively following company standards and best practices
End to End System Ownership Is responsible to own a service end to end by actively monitoring application health and performance, setting and monitoring relevant metrics and act accordingly when violatedIs responsible to reduce business continuity risks and bus factor by applying state-of-the-art practices and tools, and writing the appropriate documentation such as runbooks and OpDocsIs responsible to reduce risk and obtain customer feedback by using continuous delivery and experimentation frameworksIs responsible to independently manage an application or service by working through deployment and operations in production
Software Systems Design Has sufficient knowledge to evaluate possible architecture solutions by taking into account cost, business requirements, technology requirements and emerging technologiesHas sufficient knowledge to describe the implications of changing an existing system or adding a new system to a specific area, by having a broad, high-level understanding of the infrastructure and architecture of our systemsHas sufficient knowledge to help grow the business and/or accelerate software development by applying engineering techniques (e.g. prototyping, spiking and vendor evaluation) and standardsHas sufficient knowledge to meet business needs by designing solutions that meet current requirements and are adaptable for future enhancements
Technical Incident Management Is responsible to address and resolve live production issues by mitigating the customer impact within SLA. Is responsible to improve the overall reliability of systems by producing long term solutions through root cause analysisIs responsible to keep track of incidents by contributing to postmortem processes and logging live issues
Automation and toil reductionIs responsible to ensure that infrastructure stays current by reducing technical debt, searching for bottlenecks and preparing for scalingIs responsible to reduce cost of operations and maintenance by leveraging new technologies, automation, and partner with vendors to ensure we stay currentIs responsible to reduce human labour by writing small software features that address availability, scalability, latency and efficiency
Monitoring and Alerting improvementsIs responsible to review and verify performance of production systems and network infrastructure by continuously monitoring appropriate observability metrics, business KPIs and capacity planningIs responsible to improve application reliability by partnering with development teams to advise on setting appropriate observability metrics
Architectural Guidance Has basic knowledge to advise product teams towards a technical solution that meets the functional, nonfunctional & architectural requirements by challenging the rationale for an application design and providing context in the wider architectural landscapeHas basic knowledge to set a clear direction for a technical capability by evaluating and aligning the target architecture improvements, reframing architectural designs and decisions for varied stakeholder
Critical Thinking Is responsible to systematically identify patterns and underlying issues in complex situations, and to find solutions by applying logical and analytical thinking.Is responsible to constructively evaluate and develop ideas, plans and solutions by reviewing them, objectively taking into account external knowledge, initiating SMART improvements and articulating their rationale.
Continuous Quality and Process Improvement Is responsible to identify opportunities for process, system and structural improvements (i.e performance gains) by examining and evaluating current process flows, methods and standards.Is responsible to design and implement relevant improvements by defining adapted/new process flows, standards, and practices that enable business performance.
Effective Communication Is responsible to deliver clear, well-structured, and meaningful information to a target audience by using suitable communication mediums and language tailored to the audienceIs responsible to achieve mutually agreeable solutions by staying adaptable, communicating ideas in clear coherent language and practising active listeningIs responsible to ask relevant (follow-up) questions to properly engage with the speaker and really understand what they are saying, by applying listening and reflection techniques
Responsible for technical implementation and maintenance of data processing services and storage systems in line with the Data Governance Framework.
This role may require to be on an on-call rotation
Level of Education: Bachelor degree
Years of relevant Job Knowledge/Broad Job Knowledge: (4 - 8 years)
