Posted: June 23, 2026
Staff Site Reliability Developer - Google, Waterloo is listed at Google in Waterloo, ON. The Beaver Board aggregates this opening from the employer's career page — apply using the button below to reach the official application. Browse more jobs at Google.
This Staff Site Reliability Developer position at Google in Waterloo, ON, focuses on driving technical strategy to reduce complexity and ensure product reliability. The role involves partnering with executive stakeholders, designing company-wide capabilities for system safety, and providing technical direction and mentorship to developers. Key requirements include a Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience, at least five years of experience in product demand/supply planning, and three years of experience with Unix/Linux operating systems and networking.
Site Reliability Engineering, or SRE, at Google combines software and systems engineering principles to construct and operate large-scale, massively distributed, and fault-tolerant systems. This critical function ensures that Google Cloud's services, encompassing both internal infrastructure and externally visible systems, maintain the high reliability and uptime necessary for customer needs, alongside a rapid rate of improvement. SRE professionals continuously monitor system capacity and performance, focusing much of their software development efforts on optimising existing systems, building robust infrastructure, and eliminating manual work through comprehensive automation. Joining the SRE team offers a unique opportunity to manage the complex challenges of scale inherent to Google Cloud, leveraging expertise in coding, algorithms, complexity analysis, and large-scale system design. The SRE culture at Google thrives on intellectual curiosity, collaborative problem-solving, and openness, bringing together individuals with diverse backgrounds and perspectives to foster innovation in a blame-free environment. This role is a significant opportunity to contribute to the technical backbone that makes Google's product portfolio possible, ensuring our networks are always running efficiently for the best user experience.
As a Staff Site Reliability Developer, you will serve as a pivotal technical anchor for the Protected Data SRE team in Waterloo, providing essential technical leadership across intricate systems, fostering cross-functional alignment, and managing systemic risks. A core aspect of this role involves driving the strategy to significantly reduce complexity across the entire ecosystem, with a strong emphasis on solution and component reuse to proactively prevent new production risks. You will partner closely with executive developing stakeholders and lead cross-functional programs, meticulously balancing product reliability against critical regulatory deadlines. Furthermore, this position requires designing and implementing company-wide capabilities for enhanced change safety, distributed observability, large-scale data repair mechanisms, and robust control plane safety. Your experience will be crucial in providing technical direction and mentorship to a team of dedicated developers in Waterloo, cultivating a collaborative culture that spans various infrastructure stacks, from Spanner to the Google Front End (GFE). This role demands a deep understanding of how to build and maintain highly reliable data systems at scale.
To be successful in this Staff Site Reliability Developer role, candidates must possess a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. A minimum of five years of comprehensive experience is required, specifically including product demand/supply planning, alongside production and inventory management. Furthermore, applicants should demonstrate at least three years of hands-on experience working with Unix/Linux operating systems internals and administration, covering areas such as filesystems, inodes, and system calls, as well as networking concepts like TCP/IP, routing, network topologies, hardware, and software-defined networking. Proficiency in programming is essential, with experience in at least one of the following languages: C, C++, Java, Python, or Go. Additional experience with computer networking fundamentals, including DNS, Load Balancing, and routing, combined with strong Linux/Unix system administration skills, is also mandatory. While not strictly required, a Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field is preferred, indicating advanced technical knowledge and a commitment to continuous learning in complex systems.
