Senior Distributed Systems & SRE Lead

About YellowIpe

Our mission is to inspire the connection between technology and people. We nurture the best in our professionals through our expertise in finding and attracting top talent for the best projects. People Focus, Collaboration, and Commitment are the pillars that guide us on this journey.

Join the yellow team as our new Senior Distributed Systems & SRE Lead:

Role:

We are looking for an experienced Senior Distributed Systems & SRE Lead to join a global-scale infrastructure operation supporting a highly complex ecosystem of more than 2,750 nodes across multiple distributed, database, search, and messaging technologies. In this role, you will act as the highest technical escalation layer (L3), supporting critical production environments, resolving major incidents, driving root cause analysis, and leading automation initiatives to improve reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency. You will work closely with infrastructure, platform, database, and engineering teams, helping shape operational excellence across a large-scale distributed systems landscape.

Responsibilities:

• Ensure the stability, availability, and performance of distributed systems and data platforms;
• Act as the primary technical escalation point (L3) for major incidents involving distributed databases, search platforms, and messaging systems;
• Serve as a Subject Matter Expert across relational databases, NoSQL technologies, distributed search engines, and messaging platforms;
• Lead complex troubleshooting efforts and perform deep-dive Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for recurring issues and production outages;
• Collaborate with engineering teams on major lifecycle events, including upgrades, migrations, capacity planning, and platform modernization initiatives;
• Manage the health, scaling, and optimization of distributed clusters, including node decommissioning, rebalancing, and performance tuning;
• Define and optimize indexing, sharding, and search strategies across Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, and Solr environments;
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions using Terraform and Ansible to standardize deployments and operational procedures;
• Support and maintain large-scale big data environments; Drive automation initiatives to reduce operational overhead and improve platform reliability;
• Participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation and provide support during planned weekend interventions when required.

Requirements:

• 7+ years of hands-on experience managing large-scale distributed systems;
• Strong experience with:
• Apache Kafka
• Apache Cassandra
• Elasticsearch
• OpenSearch
• Apache Solr
• Solid experience with:
• Redis
• RabbitMQ
• MapR / Hadoop ecosystems
• Expert-level Linux/Unix administration;
• Strong shell scripting skills (Bash);
• Proven experience building automation solutions with:
• Terraform
• Ansible
• Experience managing cluster scalability, performance tuning, node lifecycle management, and incident response;
• Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills in complex production environments;
• Ability to lead technical investigations and coordinate resolution of critical incidents;
• Availability to participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation;
• Flexibility to work within rotating schedules when required.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with relational database technologies such as:
• Oracle
• PostgreSQL
• MySQL
• MariaDB
• Experience supporting both database and messaging ecosystems in large enterprise environments;
• Knowledge of infrastructure standardization and platform engineering practices;
• Experience mentoring teams and driving operational excellence initiatives;
• Willingness to expand expertise across multiple technologies within the platform ecosystem.

Important Information:

• Hybrid work model in Almada or Aveiro;
• Working schedule aligned with international teams (09:00–18:00 and/or 14:00–23:00);
• Participation in an on-call rotation is mandatory;
• Weekend interventions may be required, compensated through flexible scheduling;
• Candidates must reside in Portugal.

Apply for this opportunity in our website! =)

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