Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Lead – VP

Overview

We are seeking a Vice President-level Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Lead for a prominent global financial services firm located in Dublin. This newly established role offers a unique opportunity to design and build the SRE function from the ground up, defining its structure, processes, and team culture within a fast-expanding EMEA technology centre.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and manage a new SRE function, recruiting and mentoring a high-achieving team responsible for both on-premises and cloud infrastructure.
• Own reliability targets end-to-end, including release preparedness, platform stability, and comprehensive risk monitoring across all environments.
• Implement modern SRE practices such as Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Service Level Objectives (SLOs), error budgets, toil reduction, and thorough operational readiness incorporated into system designs from the outset.
• Promote observability, automation, and Infrastructure as Code to enhance system health and minimize manual processes.
• Serve as a bridge among Engineering, Operations, Security, and Architecture teams, integrating SRE methodologies into routine operations and release management.
• Lead operational resilience initiatives and risk management activities, including chairing change review forums, enforcing blameless post-incident analyses, and managing escalation protocols through on-call rotations.

Candidate Profile

• Proven leadership experience directing SRE or reliability engineering teams within extensive enterprise settings.
• Robust technical expertise in compute, virtualization, storage, and networking environments across both on-premises and cloud platforms.
• Practical experience with monitoring and observability tools, Infrastructure as Code technologies (Terraform, Ansible), continuous integration/deployment pipelines, and version control systems.
• Demonstrated ability to develop or advance SRE capabilities at scale, including governance frameworks and performance reporting.
• Strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills, able to engage effectively with engineering, operations, and security teams.
• Relevant industry certifications or equivalent comprehensive knowledge of infrastructure technologies such as VMware, Kubernetes, and modern data center networking.
• Experience working in regulated sectors, preferably financial services, with understanding of compliance frameworks like DORA, PRA, or ECB operational resilience standards considered a plus.

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive base salary ranging approximately from €100,000 to €134,000, depending on experience.
• Discretionary bonus scheme along with a comprehensive benefits package that includes pension contributions.
• A unique opportunity to lead and shape the creation of an SRE function within an influential role.
• Visibility and influence across Engineering, Security, and Architecture in a dynamic and growing EMEA hub.