SRE Manager

Join Proton and build a better internet where privacy is the default

At Proton, we believe that privacy is a fundamental human right and the cornerstone of democracy. Since our inception in 2014, founded by a team of scientists from CERN, we have dedicated ourselves to providing free and open-source technology to millions worldwide, ensuring access to privacy, security, and freedom online.

Our journey began with Proton Mail, the largest secure email service globally, and has since expanded to include Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive, and Proton Pass. These tools empower individuals and organizations to take control of their personal data, break away from Big Tech’s invasive practices, and defeat censorship. Our work impacts hundreds of millions of lives, from activists on the front lines defending freedom to leaders in governments protecting sensitive information. In some cases, Proton’s services have even been instrumental in saving lives by enabling secure and private communications in high-risk situations.

Proton is a profitable company that does not rely upon VC funding, supporting over 100 million user accounts with a growing team of over 500 people from over 50 different countries, from the world's top companies and universities. We value intelligence, learning potential, and ambition in our hiring process. Adaptability is key as we navigate uncharted territories and redefine how business is conducted online.

Hiring at Proton is highly selective, with less than 1% of candidates hired. We believe smaller teams of exceptional talent will always prevail over larger teams with lower talent density. You will have the opportunity work with many of the world's top minds in their fields, ranging from former international math and science olympiad winners to chess champions.

We have a global mindset and big ambitions but remain a start-up at heart. We value empowerment and flexibility and keep our structure flat to keep moving fast and avoid unnecessary politics. Tired of blending into the crowd? Join us and do work you can truly be proud of. Check our open-source projects here!

Purpose of the Role:

Proton is looking for an SRE Manager to join our infrastructure engineering department. You will lead a team of several SRE engineers and provide strategic direction, and operational knowledge to build and maintain cost-effective, scalable, and reliable services. You will have the unique opportunity to develop a fully on-premise infrastructure.

You will have a unique opportunity to support the Business Units to deliver strategic products, to accelerate features delivery and meet our high-quality standards. Your team is responsible services like HTTP load-balancers, caching, k8s clusters and DDoS protection. You will have the responsibility to provide expertise on key business products development and to lead initiatives to build common infrastructure platform solutions that can be shared across all business units.

Key Responsibilities:

• Give frequent feedback and coaching to team members to meet and exceed individual and team performance goals consistently
• Mentor SREs in technical skills and efficient teamwork behaviours, serving as a senior source of expertise
• Foster automation and lead development work to aid productivity, minimize the traditional Operational effort, and maximize Infrastructure as Code
• Design, develop, maintain, and evolve infrastructure automation features to make the load-balancers, caching or k8s clusters fully self-service
• Manage and encourage new ideas from team members to foster improvements and innovation. Seek diverse ideas and perspectives from peers, BUs and external sources to improve designs and services
• Manage team and services budget
• Run a 24/7 on-call rotation

Required Experience:

• Lots of Infrastructure platform engineering or software development experience
• Solid experience leading a team that runs production services 24/7
• Delivery of resilient application stacks via Infrastructure as Code and other CI/CD practices
• Strong skills in setting, communicating, implementing, and achieving business objectives and goals through the direct management of others
• Ability to act as a point of expertise, advise others in the team on best practices and impart knowledge. You will have a sharing, mentoring, and educational aptitude
• Strong and enthusiastic technologist, able to demonstrate broad technical knowledge
• Ability to diagnose and solve complex system and web application issues

Technical Skills we need you to have:

Systems Operations

• Experience working with containerized workloads using Kubernetes
• Experience with Linux technologies, including troubleshooting
• Experience with log management, monitoring and alerting tools e.g – Elastic Stack, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, PagerDuty
• Experience with capacity planning and platforms scalability strategies

Development

• Coding and scripting experience – e.g. Bash, Python, or others
• Development experience, including implementing scalable solution and profiling methods and tools
• Understanding of HTTP/REST, including both developing and consuming Web-based APIs 
• Systems design and hybrid architecture to solve key business problems

Security

• Familiarity with different types of security vulnerabilities and hardening solutions.
• Ability to recognize and escalate Security issues.

Bonus points for:

• Experience with Application level DDoS protection
• Experience working with caching technologies – e.g. Redis, Nats
• Continuous Integration/Delivery Tools – e.g. Gitlab, Jenkins, temporal
• Experience working with orchestration tools such as Terraform or Ansible
• Configuration Management tools – e.g. Ansible, Puppet or equivalents
• Use of Secret Management services e.g - Vault

What We Offer

• Office First: Collaboration is easier and more effective in person, which is why we have offices in Geneva, Zurich, Prague, Barcelona, Paris, London, Vilnius, Skopje, and Taipei. You can also enjoy working from home up to 30% of the time, while enjoying great company during our three core days in the office. 
• Technology: We provide all the devices and software you need to excel in your role, ensuring you have the best tools at your disposal to achieve your goals.
• Food: Lunch and snacks are provided by Proton every day at our offices.
• Transport: We will always support our employees with transport costs through subsidizing public transport, bike allowances, or parking spaces based on your office location.
• Stock Options: At Proton, we are all owners of the company and you get stock options when you join us.
• Flexible Working: You can define your own working hours as long as it works with team meetings.
• Learning and Development: We are committed to your professional growth. Proton offers various learning opportunities, including training programs, conferences and events, and continual learning.
• Employee Benefits: Comprehensive health insurance plans, competitive retirement savings options, generous vacation and leave policies, and wellness programs.
• Work that Matters: Proton is a community-first organization, started with the support of a crowdfunding campaign and built with community input. To this day, Proton’s only source of revenue is user subscriptions. Over 100 million people trust and support Proton, and we put our users and community first in everything we do. Read more about our impact here.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

At Proton, we believe diversity drives innovation and strengthens our mission to provide privacy as a default for all. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where all individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical ability, or socio-economic background, feel valued and empowered. We strive to create equal opportunities, promote open dialogue, and support continuous learning to ensure every voice is heard and respected.

If you need any extra support or reasonable adjustments during the hiring process, please let your talent partner know.

Candidate Privacy Notice

When you apply for a position, refer a candidate, or are considered for a role at Proton Technologies AG (Proton, we, us, or our), your information is stored in Greenhouse, in accordance with their Service Privacy Policy. This information is used to evaluate your suitability for the posted position. We also retain this information for consideration for future roles that you may apply for or that we believe may align with your background and skills.

If we no longer have a legitimate business need to process your information, we will either delete or anonymize it. Should you have any inquiries about how we use or manage your information, or if you wish to access, correct, or delete your data, please contact our privacy team at careers@proton.ch.

Proton does not accept unsolicited resumes from any sources other than directly from candidates. We will not pay a fee for any placement resulting from an unsolicited offer, even if the candidate is subsequently hired by Proton.

To learn more about our privacy policy, please visit our privacy policy page.

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