Site Reliability Engineering Manager (w/ Kubernetes)

You will manage a pod of 8-12 site reliability engineers through the whole of the employment relationship — growth, performance, behavior, wellbeing and shift life. In a population that is 60–70 % junior, this is the role that decides whether that population becomes senior. .

We run 24x7 and you rotate with the other Engineering People Manager (EPM) including the night band. That is a defining feature of the job, not a footnote: a manager who never sees two thirds of their team’s working life cannot manage them.

What You Will Own

• People management and workplace behaviour (≈ 35 %) — weekly 1:1s with every direct report; performance cycles, goal setting and development plans. Address attendance, collaboration, handover discipline and conduct early and directly. Act on fatigue and shift-health indicators before they become attrition or incident risk.
• Capability and training delivery (≈ 25 %) — maintain accurate Capability Ledger entries for every report and build each engineer’s training plan against the roadmap capabilities their service line requires. Schedule training as named seats inside the rota, not as time to be found later.
• Resourcing and shift management (≈ 25 %) — execute the rota, approve leave, arrange relief cover and control overtime, and hold your 1:1 cadence regardless of where people sit in the rotation. Own onboarding for new joiners and Academy graduates: environment, tooling, process, and the human side of shift work.
• Talent and progression (≈ 15 %) — interview for the group, assign Academy mentors, identify successors inside the pod, and build promotion cases that carry binding input from Service Reliability Leads and Tech Leads.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years in SRE or DevOps, with 2+ years as a people manager or team lead.
• A technical baseline current enough to coach junior and mid-level engineers credibly: Linux, Kubernetes, a public cloud, an observability stack, and the incident process.
• Demonstrated coaching capability — evidence of engineers who advanced under you.
• Willingness and availability to rotate shift bands with your pod, including the night band.
• Comfort holding a difficult conversation about behaviour or performance without escalating it prematurely.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.

Plus points if you have:

• Formal coaching or EQ-based leadership training.
• Experience onboarding fresh graduates
• Familiarity with competency frameworks and skills assessment.
• Prior experience as a Duty Manager or shift lead in a 24x7 operation.