At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead the Site Reliability team, ensuring robust and scalable systems while mentoring engineers.
- Company: Join Arbor, a mission-driven tech company transforming education for happier school environments.
- Benefits: Enjoy 32 days holiday, wellness support, flexible working, and a dedicated professional development budget.
- Other info: Dog-friendly offices and a commitment to diversity and equality.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in education technology while working with passionate professionals.
- Qualifications: Extensive experience in SRE, cloud systems, and strong programming skills required.
The predicted salary is between 80000 - 90000 £ per year.
Location: Remote
Salary: £80,000 - £90,000
About us
At Arbor, we’re on a mission to transform the way schools work for the better. We believe in a future of work in schools where being challenged doesn’t mean being burnt out and overworked. Our MIS and school management tools are already making a difference in over 7,000 schools and trusts.
About the role
We are looking for an experienced and collaborative Site Reliability Technical Lead to join our Site Reliability team and take ownership of system and solution design to ensure our products are robust, scalable, and secure. The remit and focus of the role is to blend deep technical expertise with leadership, requiring you to mentor and coach engineers, embed a culture of quality and reliability, and guide the team in making sound technical decisions.
- Core responsibilities
- Architectural Leadership: Define and guide system architecture, balancing trade-offs between speed, scalability, maintainability, and security to meet business goals.
- Reliability and Performance: Champion accountability from design through to production by ensuring systems are observable and meet agreed Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
- Incident Management: Lead Root Cause Analysis (RCA) when issues occur and contribute to optimizing the incident response process and framework.
- Automation: Drive automation initiatives across the team to reduce operational toil and improve system efficiency.
- Technical Standards: Uphold coding standards, promote automated testing, and work with the architecture community to drive technology adoption and share best practices across teams.
- Planning and Delivery: Lead technical estimation and feasibility assessments, ensuring plans are realistic and aligned with team capacity.
- Mentorship and Coaching: Mentor and coach engineers through constructive feedback, knowledge sharing, and motivation.
- Collaboration: Work closely with Product Managers, Engineering Managers, and other engineers to align technical direction with product strategy.
Requirements
- Experience: Extensive professional experience in SRE, DevOps, or Platform Engineering on complex, scalable systems.
- Cloud Systems: Extensive expertise with AWS and distributed cloud architectures.
- Platform Scale: Proven experience operating platforms serving a high volume of requests (~1000 req/sec).
- Infrastructure as Code: Advanced proficiency with Terraform and configuration management tools.
- Programming: Strong skills in Python, Go, or a similar language for automation and tooling.
- Observability: Deep experience with monitoring and observability platforms (e.g., DataDog, Prometheus, or equivalent).
- System Design: Expert understanding of distributed systems, microservices, and resilience patterns.
- Containerisation: Hands-on experience with containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, ECS).
- CI/CD: Practical experience with building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines for automated deployments.
- Leadership: Demonstrated ability in mentoring and supporting the growth of fellow engineers.
Bonus Skills
- Experience with chaos engineering and reliability testing.
- Knowledge of security best practices and compliance frameworks.
- Background in agile and lean methodologies (Scrum/Kanban).
- Contributions to open-source projects or the SRE community.
Benefits
- The chance to work alongside a team of hard-working, passionate people in a role where you’ll see the impact of your work every day.
- A dedicated wellbeing team who champion initiatives such as mindfulness, lunch n learns, manager training, mental health first aid training and much more!
- 32 days holiday (plus Bank Holidays).
- Life Assurance paid out at 3x annual salary.
- Comprehensive wellness benefit provided by AIG Smart Health.
- Private Dental Insurance with Bupa.
- Salary sacrifice Pension provided by Scottish Widows.
- Enhanced maternity and adoption leave (20 weeks full pay) and paternity (6 weeks full pay) pay.
- Access to services such as Calm and Bippit (financial wellbeing coaching).
- All of our roles champion flexible working.
- Social committees that plan team, office and company wide events.
- Dedicated professional development training budget.
- Volunteer with a charity of your choice for a day each year.
- Dog friendly offices!
Interview process
- Phone screen
- 1st stage
- 2nd stage
We are committed to a fair and comfortable recruitment process, so if you require any reasonable adjustments during your application or interview process, please reach out to a member of the team at careers@arbor-education.com.
Our commitment is also backed by our partnership with Neurodiversity Consultancy, Lexxic who provide us with training, support and advice. Arbor Education is an equal opportunities organisation.
Our goal is for Arbor to be a workplace which represents, celebrates and supports people from all backgrounds.
Refer a friend: Know someone else who would be good for this role? You can refer a friend, family member or colleague, if they are offered a role with Arbor, we will say thank you with a voucher valued up to £200!
SRE Tech Lead employer: Arbor Education
At Arbor, we pride ourselves on being an exceptional employer that champions a healthy work-life balance and fosters a supportive, collaborative culture. Our remote working environment allows for flexibility while providing ample opportunities for professional growth and development, ensuring our team members are not only challenged but also fulfilled in their roles. Join us in our mission to create happier working lives for educators, where your contributions directly impact the future of education.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land SRE Tech Lead
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Arbor Education or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to Arbor Education.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like Arbor Education.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like Arbor Education that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace SRE Tech Lead
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Arbor Education.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Arbor Education and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at Arbor Education
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Arbor Education uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.
