At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead the design and improvement of resilient, high-performance systems for health and wellness.
- Company: Holland & Barrett, a tech-driven organisation focused on health and wellness.
- Benefits: Autonomy, collaborative culture, and opportunities for real impact in technology.
- Why this job: Shape the future of technology while empowering millions with reliable systems.
- Qualifications: 5-8 years in SRE or operational engineering, strong coding skills, and cloud expertise.
- Other info: Join a modern engineering culture that values innovation and continuous improvement.
The predicted salary is between 60000 - 84000 £ per year.
About the role
Own Reliability. Shape the Platform. Empower Millions. At Holland & Barrett, we're transforming into a truly product- and platform-led technology organisation - and we're looking for a Lead Site Reliability Engineer who's excited by scale, complexity, and impact. Our mission? Build and evolve the resilient, high-performance systems that power health and wellness for millions of customers. If you're obsessed with reliability, driven by automation, and thrive in high-ownership engineering cultures, this is your opportunity to lead from the front.
Responsibilities
- Architect and improve cloud-native systems with reliability as a first-class principle.
- Shape SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, capacity planning, and performance strategies.
- Continuously evolve availability, efficiency, and resilience across our platforms.
- Mentor SREs, platform engineers, and developers across the organisation.
- Champion automation, observability, DevSecOps, and modern operational practices.
- Influence engineering culture and architectural direction.
- Own and lead high-severity incident response with calm, clarity, and technical depth.
- Run world-class post-incident reviews and drive meaningful, measurable improvements.
- Strengthen monitoring, alerting, on-call practices, and reliability processes.
- Support resilience validation through load testing, stress testing, and chaos engineering.
- Build tools and automation that remove toil and accelerate teams.
- Develop CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure-as-Code environments.
- Drive consistency, repeatability, and self-service across engineering.
- Partner with Security, Platform, and Engineering teams to align reliability with security and resilience goals.
- Lead teams toward better design, operational readiness, and measurable service health.
- Contribute to documentation, runbooks, and operational processes that scale.
Qualifications
- 5-8+ years in SRE, Platform, Cloud Infrastructure, or operational engineering roles.
- Hands-on experience architecting and improving large-scale, distributed systems.
- Strong coding proficiency in Python, Go, Bash, or similar automation-focused languages.
- Expertise with observability stacks: Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry.
- Deep AWS experience across EC2, EKS, Lambda, VPC, DynamoDB, S3, CloudFront, RDS, IAM, KMS, and more.
- Proficiency with Terraform, CloudFormation, or AWS CDK.
- Incident response leadership and root-cause analysis expertise.
- Excellent documentation and communication skills.
- Strong analytical and troubleshooting abilities.
Bonus
- Experience mentoring or leading engineers within SRE or platform teams.
- Experience with load testing, stress testing, and chaos engineering.
- A passion for uplifting engineering culture through tooling, automation, and reliability-first thinking.
Why Build the Future with Holland & Barrett?
Technology is at the heart of our mission to make health & wellness accessible to everyone. As a Lead SRE, you won't just keep systems running - you'll design the reliability, resilience, and operational maturity that accelerates our entire business.
We offer:
- A modern engineering culture built on autonomy, experimentation, and learning.
- The chance to create real impact across critical customer and internal platforms.
- A collaborative team that values innovation, continuous improvement, and technical excellence.
If you're ready to lead reliability for platforms with massive real-world impact, we'd love to meet you. Apply now and help shape the future of H&B Technology.
Lead Site Reliability Engineer employer: Holland and Barrett
Contact Detail:
Holland and Barrett Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Lead Site Reliability Engineer
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to folks in the industry, attend meetups, and connect with current employees at Holland & Barrett. A friendly chat can open doors that a CV just can't.
✨Tip Number 2
Show off your skills! If you’ve got a portfolio or GitHub with projects that highlight your SRE expertise, make sure to share it. Real-world examples of your work can speak volumes.
✨Tip Number 3
Prepare for the interview by brushing up on your incident response strategies and automation practices. Be ready to discuss how you've tackled challenges in the past and how you can bring that experience to Holland & Barrett.
✨Tip Number 4
Don’t forget to apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen by the right people. Plus, it shows you’re genuinely interested in joining our team.
We think you need these skills to ace Lead Site Reliability Engineer
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Your Passion for Reliability: When you're writing your application, let your enthusiasm for reliability shine through! Share specific examples of how you've tackled challenges in previous roles and how you’ve made systems more resilient. We want to see that you’re not just skilled, but also genuinely excited about the impact of your work.
Tailor Your Application: Make sure to customise your application to reflect the job description. Highlight your experience with cloud-native systems, automation, and incident response. We love it when candidates connect their skills directly to what we’re looking for, so don’t hold back!
Be Clear and Concise: While we appreciate detail, clarity is key! Keep your application straightforward and to the point. Use bullet points where possible to make it easy for us to see your qualifications at a glance. Remember, we’re looking for someone who can communicate effectively, so show us you can do that right from the start.
Apply Through Our Website: We encourage you to apply directly through our website. It’s the best way for us to receive your application and ensures you’re considered for the role. Plus, it gives you a chance to explore more about our culture and values while you’re at it!
How to prepare for a job interview at Holland and Barrett
✨Know Your Stuff
Make sure you brush up on your knowledge of cloud-native systems and reliability principles. Be ready to discuss your hands-on experience with AWS services and observability stacks like Datadog or Prometheus. They’ll want to see that you can talk the talk and walk the walk!
✨Showcase Your Leadership Skills
Since this role involves mentoring and leading teams, prepare examples of how you've successfully guided others in past roles. Think about specific incidents where your leadership made a difference, especially during high-severity incidents.
✨Demonstrate Your Problem-Solving Abilities
Be ready to tackle hypothetical scenarios related to incident response or system failures. They might ask how you would handle a major outage or improve system resilience. Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure your answers.
✨Cultural Fit is Key
Holland & Barrett values innovation and collaboration, so be prepared to discuss how you align with their engineering culture. Share your thoughts on automation, DevSecOps, and how you’ve contributed to a positive engineering environment in previous roles.