Sr. IT Systems Engineer, DevOps
Hawthorne · USD 155,000-215,000 · 5+ years experience · Hybrid · Posted Sep 26, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 5+ years experience
- Workplace
- Hybrid
- Location
- Hawthorne
- Salary
- USD 155,000-215,000 · Base salary
About the role
- SpaceX is looking for a Senior IT Systems Engineer with a focus on DevOps to join the IT Applications team.
- You will own the architecture, design, implementation, and evolution of CI/CD platforms, infrastructure automation, and reliability engineering practices at scale.
- The role involves working with on-premise VM and Kubernetes infrastructure in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment.
Responsibilities
- Architect, design, implement, and manage enterprise-scale CI/CD pipelines and platforms running on both on-premise VM infrastructure and Kubernetes clusters.
- Lead automation of deployment, configuration, monitoring, and operations to drive reliability, scalability, and efficiency across hundreds of on-premise servers, VMs, and containerized environments.
- Define and enforce DevOps, SRE, and release engineering best practices, standards, and security controls across on-premise VM and Kubernetes infrastructure.
- Partner closely with software engineering, development, and operations teams to streamline code integration, testing, delivery, and feedback loops.
- Own system performance, capacity planning, troubleshooting, and optimization of on-premise VM clusters and Kubernetes environments; drive root-cause analysis and long-term improvements.
- Design, maintain, and enhance observability for on-premise infrastructure using tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, Influx, Splunk, or equivalents.
- Lead high-availability, disaster recovery, and business continuity strategies for on-premise VM and Kubernetes platforms, including planning, executing, and improving routine annual disaster recovery exercises.
- Administer, scale, and evolve CI/CD platforms, source control systems, and supporting on-premise Kubernetes clusters or VM-based infrastructure.
- Propose, champion, and implement infrastructure-as-code, GitOps, and automated release processes for both VM and Kubernetes environments.
- Mentor junior engineers, review designs and code, and contribute to team technical direction for on-premise infrastructure.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or information systems with 5+ years’ experience in DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, or related role, OR 10+ years’ equivalent experience.
- Experience administering and scaling Linux environments (physical, virtual/on-premise VMs, and containerized/Kubernetes).
- Experience administering and scaling code hosting/collaboration platforms and CI/CD systems on on-premise infrastructure.
- Experience designing and operating production CI/CD pipelines and automation at scale on VM and Kubernetes platforms.
- Willing to work extended hours or weekends as necessary.
- Ability to pass Air Force background checks for Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg.
Preferred qualifications
- Strong experience with observability and monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, ELK, etc.) for on-premise VM and Kubernetes environments.
- Advanced scripting and programming (Python, Bash, Go, Groovy, or similar).
- Proficiency with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) including on-premise Kubernetes distributions.
- Experience with configuration management and IaC (Ansible, Terraform, Chef, Puppet, or similar) for on-premise VMs and Kubernetes clusters.
- Deep knowledge of Git, branching strategies, semantic versioning, and release management.
- Experience with on-premise virtualization platforms and hybrid VM/Kubernetes environments.
- Experience with security hardening, networking, and compliance for on-premise infrastructure.
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives, influence across teams, and thrive in a fast-paced, high-ownership environment.
Benefits
- Long-term incentives in the form of company stock or long-term cash awards
- Potential discretionary bonuses
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage
- 401(k) retirement plan
- Short and long-term disability insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid parental leave
- 3 weeks of paid vacation
- 10 or more paid holidays per year
Skills
- Kubernetes
- Linux
- Grafana
- Prometheus
- Influx
- Splunk
- GitHub
- GitLab
- Bitbucket
- Jenkins
- Docker
- Python
Show all 15 skills
- Bash
- Go
- Ansible
