Ridgeline

Senior Staff Software Engineer - Site Reliability Engineering

Location: Reno, NV; San Ramon, CA

Are you passionate about building systems that make reliability a competitive advantage? Do you enjoy combining hands-on engineering with cross-team influence to improve how organizations operate at scale? Do you thrive in fast-paced environments where you can tackle ambiguity, reduce toil, and experiment with AI-powered tooling? If so, we invite you to join our innovative Site Reliability Engineering team at Ridgeline.

As a Site Reliability Engineer at Ridgeline, you’ll be part of a hands-on, strategic team responsible for scaling reliability across our cloud-native platform. You’ll design and improve systems like Health Manager, Incident Command, and observability infrastructure—while also driving forward FinOps tooling and AI-assisted automation that reduce operational burden and surface critical insights. This role is central to Ridgeline’s mission of delivering high-performance, zero-downtime services with speed, clarity, and confidence—and your work will directly empower product, infrastructure, and customer-facing teams to move faster without sacrificing reliability.

You must be work authorized in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship.

What will you do?

• Build and evolve systems like Health Manager, Incident Command, and observability platforms that support zero-downtime deployments and operational readiness
• Partner with development and infrastructure teams to embed reliability into services and processes
• Participate in the SRE on-call rotation and lead incident response as needed
• Design metrics, tooling, and workflows that enable zero-downtime deployments, fast detection, and proactive issue resolution
• Develop and maintain FinOps tooling to drive cost visibility, usage transparency, and financially-informed engineering decisions
• Lead incident triage and retrospectives with a blameless, data-driven approach
• Define observability signals that make system health visible, actionable, and reliable
• Write production-quality code and ship real improvements—measured by impact, not just effort
• Drive initiatives that reduce risk, increase visibility, or improve operational resilience across services
• Foster an outcomes-focused team culture through honest communication, clarity, and accountability
• Think creatively, own problems, seek solutions, and communicate clearly along the way
• Contribute to a collaborative environment rooted in learning, teaching, and transparency

Desired Skills and Experience

• 10+ years in software engineering position or similar function, with experience operating large-scale, mission-critical systems
• Proficiency in one or more of: Kotlin, Java, JavaScript, Python
• Experience with observability platforms (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus) and monitoring best practices
• Strong familiarity with infrastructure-as-code tools (e.g., Terraform, CDKTF) and CI/CD systems
• Experience leading or participating in incident response and service ownership
• Experience deploying, monitoring, and maintaining multi-tenant architectures
• Ability to work effectively across teams and communicate technical concepts with clarity
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, especially in facilitating incident response and working sessions with service teams
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and working toward measurable outcomes
• Proven ability to balance individual contribution with cross-functional impact
• Experience or interest in FinOps, cost-aware system design, or cloud usage optimization is a plus
• Familiarity with AI-assisted tooling or workflows is a plus, but not required
• Willingness to learn about cutting-edge technologies while cultivating expertise in a business domain/problem space.
• An aptitude for problem solving
• Ability to communicate effectively
• Serious interest in having fun at work

Who You Are

• A systems thinker who brings clarity and direction to complex, ambiguous environments
• A strong communicator who can model transparency, collaboration, and constructive disagreement
• An engineer who delivers—not just ideas, but real improvements that teams rely on
• Passionate about outcomes, not just effort—you prioritize what matters and follow through
• Committed to enabling others by reducing friction, building shared tooling, and simplifying operations
• Comfortable offering candid feedback and engaging in disagreement with respect and clarity—then committing fully once a decision is made, aligning with the team to drive results
• And finally—you have a serious interest in having fun at work

About Ridgeline

Ridgeline is the industry cloud platform for investment management. It was founded by visionary tech entrepreneur Dave Duffield (co-founder of both PeopleSoft and Workday) to apply his successful formula of solving operational business challenges with bold innovation and human connectivity to the unique needs of the investment management industry.

Ridgeline started with a clean sheet of paper and a deep bench of experts bound by a set of core values and motivated to revolutionize an industry underserved by its current tech offerings. We are building a new, modern platform in the public cloud, purpose-built for the investment management industry and we are prioritizing security, agility, and usability to empower business like never before.

With a growing campus in Reno and offices in New York, Lake Tahoe, and the Bay Area, Ridgeline is proud to have built a fast-growing, people-first company that has been recognized by Fast Company as a “Best Workplace for Innovators,” by The Software Report as a “Top 100 Software Company,” and by Forbes as one of “America’s Best Startup Employers.”

Ridgeline is proud to be a community-minded, discrimination-free equal opportunity workplace.

Ridgeline processes the information you submit in connection with your application in accordance with the Ridgeline Applicant Privacy Statement. Please review the Ridgeline Applicant Privacy Statement in full to understand our privacy practices and contact us with any questions.

Compensation and Benefits

The cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at $200,000-$250,000. Final compensation amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amount listed above.

As an employee at Ridgeline, you’ll have many opportunities for advancement in your career and can make a true impact on the product.

In addition to the base salary, 100% of Ridgeline employees can participate in our Company Stock Plan subject to the applicable Stock Option Agreement. We also offer rich benefits that reflect the kind of organization we want to be: one in which our employees feel valued and are inspired to bring their best selves to work. These include unlimited vacation, educational and wellness reimbursements, and $0 cost employee insurance plans. Please check out our Careers page for a more comprehensive overview of our perks and benefits.

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