Lead, Site Reliability Engineer

Overview

Position Summary:

The Lead Site Reliability Engineer (Lead SRE) will report to the SRE Manager in support of the Royal Caribbean website by utilizing application and user performance data to guide informed decision-making. The Lead SRE will use application and user performance metrics collected from various sources and tools to support tasks such as initial triage of critical production incidents, bug analysis, implementation of best practices in site reliability engineering, infrastructure optimization, and seamless collaboration between internal teams and external service providers, among other operational initiatives.

The ideal candidate will have a deep understanding and proven track record in a senior IT support role and could provide leadership toward the development of new employees. The ideal candidate will also have an eye toward the rapidly evolving technology landscape and provide leadership over advanced and emerging concepts, to research and implement proactive and preventative measures that avoid technical incidents.

S/he must be able to work with multiple product and project teams simultaneously, thrive in a fast-paced and dynamic environment and connect unexpected threads across disparate teams. The role will provide direct leadership over the individual contributors who provide Level 1 and Level 2 support. This leader requires the ability to direct teams during high-pressure business critical incidents, to ensure that customer-focused decisions are being made to minimize/eliminate guest/employee experience impacts.

At a high-level, responsibilities for this role will include:

• Product Health : Provides leadership over a large team of Level 1 and Level 2 support resources. Is responsible for the Incident Management, Application Performance, Configuration Management and Operational Readiness of the products within her/his ownership. Partners with and collaborate closely with stakeholders from the various teams within IT to ensure that performance tools, configuration tools and monitoring tools meet the needs of her/his products.
• Incident Management : Is responsible for a team of resources prepared to react quickly to production incidents with the goal to restore systems/applications back to normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the impact on guest/crew experience or business operations, thus ensuring the best possible service levels and availability are maintained. Review ticket analysis and approve closure of tickets/incidents. Understands architecture of Royal website and escalates incidents as needed to the appropriate team for further triage. Synthesizes and communicates incident details to the production team, stakeholders, including executive level stakeholders. Review postmortem / RCA document and follow up.
• Application Performance Management (APM) : Ensures the proactive monitoring and management of performance and availability of the software applications within the products s/he is responsible for. Strives to detect and diagnose complex application performance problems to maintain an expected level of service. Builds case for prioritizing bug and enhancement tickets. Creates reports on new deployment build performance for product teams to ensure quality.
• Configuration Management : Leads the team(s) in implementing and maintaining the technology standards and practices across product definition and product configuration. Adjust health thresholds and other monitoring settings based on historical performance. Creates and maintains performance dashboards used by support and product teams. Maintains alerting, communication, and documentation tool chain to ensure it is up to date and efficient.
• Change Control Governance : Ensuring all production changes required by the product teams are carried out in a planned and authorized manner, within established change control policies and procedures and that all changes are thoroughly tested and validated from the monitoring perspective.
• Production Operations Readiness : Ensure all product implementations go through an operational readiness review. Establish and maintain clear communication channels (e.g., Slack, Teams) with the scrum and marketing teams. Ensure all team members are informed about relevant updates and changes that may affect the website.

• 10+ years in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), DevOps, or a related IT operations role.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, or other relevant advanced degree preferred.
• At least 3 years of experience managing teams and collaborating with external service providers.

• Technical Expertise : Proficiency in cloud platforms such as AWS, AWS Elastic Beanstalk; Understanding of API design principles: REST, SOAP, Graph; Advanced knowledge of monitoring and logging tools (AppDynamics, Datadog, Splunk, New Relic, etc.); Strong proficiency in Adobe AEM is crucial for guiding technical initiatives and mentoring teams.
• AI & Automation Expertise : Working knowledge of scripting languages (Python, Bash, PowerShell) applied to automate alert routing, incident response, and infrastructure tasks, combined with a proactive mindset to explore and adopt new automation approaches. Hands-on exposure to AI Ops platforms for enhancing anomaly detection, root cause analysis, and incident management, demonstrating a passion for staying ahead of industry trends. Solid understanding of AI/ML and Generative AI techniques aimed at reducing alert noise, predicting incidents, and developing automation workflows, with active interest in piloting innovative solutions. Familiarity with autonomous AI agents (Agentic Agents) or intelligent automation systems within operational environments, coupled with enthusiasm to experiment with emerging AI-driven tools in SRE.
• Problem-Solving Skills : Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills to diagnose and resolve complex production issues swiftly. Ability to develop and implement effective incident response plans.
• Communication and Collaboration : Excellent written and verbal communication skills for effective interaction with cross-functional teams and documentation. Ability to collaborate with Development, QA, IT, and external managed service providers to ensure seamless operations.

• The Lead SRE Engineer may be required to participate in an on-call rotation to handle urgent incidents and ensure 24x7 system reliability.
• On-call duties may include evenings, weekends, and holidays as needed.