Lead Site Reliability Engineer
As a Lead Site Reliability Engineer, the individual will set the reliability standard across the Infrastructure Engineering organisation at DraftKings. The role involves defining how reliability is measured for critical services and partnering with engineering teams to build and refine Service Level Objectives that connect infrastructure performance to the experiences supported by the platforms.
The Lead Site Reliability Engineer will transform complex telemetry into clear, actionable insights to assist teams and senior leaders in making informed decisions regarding reliability, risk, and priorities. Operating as an individual contributor, the role requires leading through technical expertise and influence to shape a consistent reliability practice across the organisation.
- Lead and mature the Service Level Objective development process across Infrastructure Engineering, establishing clear frameworks and standards for setting meaningful reliability targets.
- Partner with engineering teams to design and implement Service Level Objectives, beginning with the critical user journeys each service supports and translating them into measurable indicators, targets, and error budget policies.
- Review and refine existing reliability objectives to keep them aligned with changing customer impact, technical dependencies, and business priorities.
- Connect infrastructure reliability targets to the application and platform experiences they support, making dependencies and their impact on end-user experience clear and measurable.
- Build reporting processes and tooling that provide a clear view of reliability across critical components, translating technical signals into actionable insights for Senior Managers and Directors.
- Influence reliability practices across teams through technical guidance, design reviews, mentoring, and collaboration with engineering partners.
- Help teams distinguish meaningful service degradation from true downtime by applying thoughtful measurement strategies to complex distributed systems.
- A Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent relevant education, experience, and training. (required)
- At least 7 years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, including hands-on experience defining and operationalising Service Level Objectives, Service Level Indicators, and error budgets at scale. (required)
- Deep experience with observability platforms such as Datadog, including building dashboards, monitors, and reporting from metrics and logging pipelines. (required)
- Experience connecting infrastructure-level reliability objectives to application or platform-level outcomes and evaluating how technical dependencies affect end-user experience. (required)
- Strong knowledge of distributed systems and the failure modes that can make reliability measurement complex, with the ability to assess what technical signals truly represent. (required)
- Proven ability to influence across engineering teams, translate reliability concepts for technical and non-technical audiences, and drive alignment without direct authority. (required)
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience developing and presenting reliability reporting to Senior Managers, Directors, and cross-functional stakeholders. (required)
- Working knowledge of cloud and infrastructure environments such as Amazon Web Services, Kubernetes, and on-premise systems, with the technical depth to partner effectively with the teams operating them. (required)
- US base salary range of 148,000.00 USD - 185,000.00 USD, plus bonus and equity.
- Comprehensive health benefits including medical, dental, and vision plans.
- Wellbeing programme including free therapy sessions, employee assistance programmes, the Calm App, and virtual yoga classes.
- 14 weeks of 100% paid parental leave and workplace lactation support.
- Partnership with Care.com for backup childcare.
- Family planning support including adoption, surrogacy, and fertility treatments.
- Flexible PTO for US employees.
- Pet insurance.
- Gym membership reimbursement.
- Financial planning support including 401(k) matching and Origin Financial programmes.
- Commuter benefits.
- Tuition reimbursement programme.
DraftKings Inc. is a leading American digital sports entertainment and gaming company, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 2012, it started in daily fantasy sports and has grown into one of the largest US online sportsbook and iGaming operators. The company offers mobile sports betting, online casino and daily fantasy contests across regulated North American markets. DraftKings is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange and employs several thousand people.