Site Reliability Engineer II

Varda is accelerating the development of commercial space infrastructure, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical reentry capsules. Our W-Series vehicles are built, designed, and operated in-house, including pharmaceutical processing payloads, capsules, C-PICA heat shields, and satellite buses. From life-saving pharmaceuticals to advanced fiber optics, Varda enables products that can only be manufactured in space. We are expanding the economic bounds of humankind by creating both the products and infrastructure needed for space to directly benefit life on Earth.

Our team includes veterans from SpaceX, Blue Origin, major pharmaceutical companies, and Silicon Valley. Founded in January 2021 by Will Bruey and Delian Asparouhov, Varda is backed by world-class investors such as Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst. Headquartered in El Segundo, California, Varda operates offices and a production facility where vehicles, equipment, and materials are built, integrated, and tested. We also have offices in Washington, DC and Huntsville, AL.

About the Role

At Varda Space Industries, we're pushing the boundaries of space and materials science. As a Site Reliability Engineer, you'll build, scale, and maintain the infrastructure powering our systems on Earth, in orbit, and beyond. We seek an experienced engineer with deep Kubernetes and containerized technology expertise. You are a hands-on operator and builder who applies first-principles thinking to software delivery (DevOps) and production reliability (SRE), thriving in complex, mission-critical environments.

Responsibilities

• Solve challenging technical problems across a wide range of modern technologies.
• Apply a software engineering mindset to automate operations and improve system reliability, scalability, and resilience.
• Design and build infrastructure enabling rapid development—from cloud-based services to embedded spacecraft software.
• Shape Varda’s infrastructure strategy and drive operational excellence across containerized environments.
• Deploy, maintain, and operate mission-critical applications and infrastructure supporting spacecraft and company-wide systems.
• Build and evolve Infrastructure as Code (IaC) frameworks using tools such as Terraform.
• Implement and operate observability systems (metrics, logging, tracing) and actionable alerting.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for safe, repeatable, and rapid deployments.
• Partner with software and hardware engineers to deliver highly operable, reliable, and scalable systems and pipelines.
• Identify, analyze, and resolve system bottlenecks and reliability risks; perform performance tuning and implement long-term stability improvements.
• Respond to and resolve production incidents; perform root cause analysis and drive corrective actions through blameless postmortems.
• Rotate through the team’s on-call schedule to keep critical systems healthy and responsive.
• Occasionally travel to customer sites and other Varda locations to troubleshoot, deploy, or test critical infrastructure.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or related STEM field with 3+ years of Site Reliability Engineering experience, or 5+ years of progressive experience in DevOps, SRE, or Systems Engineering in lieu of a degree.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using tools like Terraform to automate server provisioning.
• Experience operating Kubernetes or similar container orchestration platforms in production environments.
• Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, InfluxDB, or similar observability technologies.
• Knowledge of software-defined networking (VPC, Subnets, Firewalls, VPNs, etc.).
• Python, Bash, PowerShell (or similar) scripting experience.
• Positive and strong communication skills, both written and oral.
• Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed.
• Must be physically able to regularly lift 25 lbs. for duties such as delivering computers, unpacking, and rack-mounting equipment.

Qualifications

• Experience provisioning and managing scalable Azure cloud infrastructure using native tools and best practices.
• Experience implementing configuration management, provisioning, and workflow automation via IaC, CI/CD, and GitOps (e.g., Ansible, Salt, Argo CD).
• Strong understanding of Linux systems and container runtimes (e.g., containerd, Docker).
• Experience with GPU workloads or high-throughput computing.
• Hands-on experience operating and optimizing High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments, including workload schedulers such as Slurm (e.g., queue/partition design, fair-share scheduling, and cluster resource management).
• Experience with hybrid environments (cloud + on-prem or edge systems).
• Experience debugging distributed systems at scale (network, storage, latency).
• Experience with databases and data modeling.

Pay

Site Reliability Engineer: $133,000 - $170,000 per year. Leveling and base salary are determined by job-related skills, education level, experience, and job performance. You will be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of stock options and/or long-term cash awards.

Benefits

• Flexible PTO policy + 12 paid holidays.
• 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance plans for employees and dependents, with FSA and employer-matched HSA options.
• Voluntary accident, hospital, critical illness, and pet insurance.
• $120/month wellness reimbursement for gym and fitness expenses.
• 12 weeks of parental leave (with supplemental disability leave for CA mothers).
• Family building, pregnancy, parenting, and menopause benefits via Maven Clinic.
• Sponsored One Medical memberships for employees and dependents.
• Substantial incentive equity in a fully funded space start-up.
• 401(k) retirement plan with 6% employer match (immediately vested).
• $20/pay period cell phone reimbursement.
• Relocation support for new hires, if needed.
• Fully stocked kitchen with lunch provided daily and dinner provided twice weekly.
• Company and team-bonding events, happy hours, and mission-success celebrations.
• Complimentary EV charging.

Varda requires employees to be U.S. persons (U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, or protected individuals as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)) due to access to export-controlled items.