Senior Site Reliability Engineer Resume Example
Hiring managers evaluating Senior Site Reliability Engineers look for architectural ownership measured by reliability gains, not tool implementation without strategic context.
This resume is for senior site reliability engineers who lead infrastructure strategy and mentor technical teams, but aren't yet responsible for global engineering headcount or department-wide platform roadmaps.
- Ownership of large-scale distributed system architecture and reliability strategy
- Evidence of driving significant improvements in MTTR, RTO, or system availability
- Proven ability to elevate team technical standards through mentorship and automation
- Technical skills categorized by infrastructure, automation, and observability domains
- Professional experience section leading with high-impact architectural migrations
- Education and certifications placed at the bottom to prioritize technical leadership scope
Terrell Carter
Summary
Experience
- Designed and deployed an Istio service mesh across 12 production clusters, improving cross-service security and observability for 4M+ monthly active users.
- Led the migration of the Figma design engine storage layer to a multi-region RDS architecture, increasing system availability from 99.9% to 99.99%.
- Mentored 4 junior SREs on infrastructure-as-code principles and Go-based automation, resulting in a 25% increase in team deployment velocity.
- Architected a custom disaster recovery framework that reduced Recovery Time Objective (RTO) from 45 minutes to 11 minutes.
- Automated the provisioning of ephemeral staging environments using Kubernetes and Terraform, saving $340K in annual AWS compute costs.
- Established core SLIs and SLOs for the transaction processing pipeline, providing visibility that reduced critical incident volume by 38% over 18 months.
- Engineered a Go-based CLI tool to automate on-call handovers and incident documentation, adopted by 15+ engineering teams to streamline post-mortem analysis.
- Scaled Prometheus and Grafana monitoring infrastructure to handle 2.2M metrics per second, enabling real-time detection of payment processing latencies.
- Developed Python scripts to automate routine database backups and maintenance tasks, eliminating 15 hours of manual toil per week.
- Implemented a centralized logging solution using the ELK stack across 40+ microservices, reducing log retrieval time for developers by 50%.
- Optimized Docker image build pipelines, decreasing CI/CD execution time from 14 minutes to 6 minutes for the core application repository.
Education
Skills
Kubernetes · Docker · Terraform · Python · Linux · Prometheus · Go · AWS · Grafana · PagerDuty · Service Mesh · Incident Management · GitOps · SLO/SLI
What makes this resume effective
- This resume meets the hiring bar for a senior site reliability engineer by demonstrating architectural ownership, measurable reliability improvements, and technical mentorship.
- Notice how Terrell highlights the Istio service mesh deployment at Figma, which signals the ability to manage complex cross-service security and observability at scale.
- See how the reduction of RTO from 45 to 11 minutes at Figma provides the concrete, outcome-based evidence recruiters need to verify senior-level impact.
How to write better bullet points
Managed Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring.
Scaled Prometheus and Grafana monitoring infrastructure to handle 2.2M metrics per second, enabling real-time detection of payment processing latencies.
It moves from a vague task to a specific scale and business-critical outcome.
Helped junior team members learn Go.
Mentored 4 junior SREs on infrastructure-as-code principles and Go-based automation, resulting in a 25% increase in team deployment velocity.
It quantifies leadership impact by showing how mentorship directly improved the team's output.
Improved system availability for the design engine.
Led the migration of the design engine storage layer to a multi-region RDS architecture, increasing system availability from 99.9% to 99.99%.
It highlights the specific architectural method used to achieve a high-nines reliability improvement.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer resume writing tips
- Detail your role in major architectural shifts, like the multi-region RDS migration, to prove ownership of complex systems.
- Quantify reliability gains using metrics like RTO or incident volume reduction to demonstrate direct business impact.
- Explicitly mention mentoring junior engineers or improving team velocity to validate technical leadership without a manager title.
Common mistakes
- Focusing only on 'doing' tasks rather than 'leading' initiatives, which fails to show the strategic mindset required for senior roles.
- Omitting the 'why' behind technical choices, such as failing to explain how a tool like Istio solved a specific security or observability problem.
- Failing to show cross-team influence, such as neglecting to mention how custom automation tools were adopted by other engineering departments.
Frequently asked questions
Is this resume right for someone with 10+ years of experience? Yes, if you’ve moved from individual execution to architectural strategy. It is less suited for Staff roles requiring organization-wide policy.
Yes, if you’ve moved from individual execution to architectural strategy. It is less suited for Staff roles requiring organization-wide policy.
Yes, if you have transitioned from individual execution to leading architectural strategy and mentoring others. It may not be suitable if you are targeting Staff or Principal roles that require org-wide policy influence.
What if I haven't used Istio or Kubernetes? Yes, because the structure emphasizes reliability outcomes; simply swap specific tools for your own stack, such as Nomad, Consul, or custom tech.
Yes, because the structure emphasizes reliability outcomes; simply swap specific tools for your own stack, such as Nomad, Consul, or custom tech.
You can still use this structure by replacing those specific technologies with your own stack, such as Nomad or Consul. The focus should remain on how you used your tools to solve high-level reliability and security challenges.
What if I don't have exact RTO or MTTR numbers? Use directional improvements or percentages if exact figures are unavailable to show you are tracking and impacting reliability outcomes.
Use directional improvements or percentages if exact figures are unavailable to show you are tracking and impacting reliability outcomes.
In this resume, Terrell uses specific metrics like '11 minutes' to show impact. If you lack exact figures, use directional improvements or percentages to show you are tracking reliability outcomes.
How much should I change before applying? Keep the impact-first structure but swap tools to match the job description, ensuring you retain the focus on leadership and architecture.
Keep the impact-first structure but swap tools to match the job description, ensuring you retain the focus on leadership and architecture.
Keep the impact-first bullet structure but swap the specific tools to match the job description. Ensure you retain the focus on leadership and architecture rather than just listing maintenance tasks.
What do hiring managers focus on most at this level? They look for the capacity to handle ambiguity and independently lead large-scale infrastructure changes that improve the entire organization.
They look for the capacity to handle ambiguity and independently lead large-scale infrastructure changes that improve the entire organization.
They look for the ability to handle ambiguity and lead large-scale infrastructure changes independently. The emphasis is on your capacity to improve the entire engineering organization's reliability posture.
Related resume examples
Get a Senior Site Reliability Engineer resume recruiters expect
Use this example as a base and tailor it to your job description in seconds.
Generate my resume