Site Reliability Engineer

Why this Site Reliability Engineer role exists

Cobalt Systems is a Technology & IT company of 450 people, founded in 2019 and headquartered in Austin, United States. Cobalt builds identity and access governance software for banks, insurers and hospital networks. The product grew out of a consultancy practice, so the team stays unusually close to compliance realities rather than designing in the abstract. The team hiring here is based in Austin, TX, and the post is full-time on a hybrid basis.

Read the responsibilities as a symptom list. "Own SLOs and error budgets for core identity services" sitting at the top of a site reliability engineer brief usually means that area is currently being done badly, late, or by someone who should be doing something else. At senior level you will set direction inside your area, mentor others, and be judged as much on the decisions you prevent as the work you produce.

Hiring in technology has become more selective rather than smaller. Teams are running leaner and hiring people who can operate across the stack and reason about cost, reliability and security — not only feature delivery. Austin, TX sits inside that picture: The US market rewards specialisation. Salary bands vary hugely by metro — a role in San Francisco or New York can pay 35-45% more than the same title in the Midwest, though cost of living usually absorbs the difference.

A week as a Site Reliability Engineer at Cobalt Systems

This is a hybrid role based in Austin, TX. In practice that usually means two to three anchor days on site for planning, reviews and the conversations that are faster in person, with focused work done wherever you are most effective.

Most of the week goes on own slos and error budgets for core identity services, with deep AWS or Azure experience with Terraform work threaded through it. The part nobody advertises is upkeep — the fixes, follow-ups and small corrections that stop last quarter's work from quietly rotting. In a 450-person technology & it company that upkeep lands on the person closest to the work, which here is you.

Expect a listening period of roughly six weeks, then ownership of a meaningful problem. By month nine your judgement should be load-bearing for the team. Whatever the plan, the 5+ years in SRE, infrastructure or backend engineering expectation is the one that will be reviewed first.

What $155,000 – $195,000 really means here

The advertised range is $155,000 – $195,000, a spread of roughly 26% between floor and ceiling, with a midpoint near USD 175,000. In most structured pay systems the midpoint represents someone fully performing the role, the floor someone growing into it, and the ceiling a candidate who arrives with directly transferable, hard-to-hire experience — in this case, depth in 5+ years in SRE, infrastructure or backend engineering.

The national average across advertised United States roles is $96,000. That number includes every city and every seniority, so treat it as a floor check rather than a benchmark — what matters is what site reliability engineer work pays in Austin, TX specifically, and what your cost of living there will be.

Let Cobalt Systems name the figure first where you can. If pressed, quote a range whose floor you would genuinely accept and whose ceiling you can justify with a specific 5+ years in SRE, infrastructure or backend engineering outcome you delivered.

Who gets hired as a Site Reliability Engineer

Shortlists for a role like this usually come down to five or six people who all meet the stated requirements. Evidence separates them. The strongest applications bring a piece of work you stopped, deferred or simplified, and what it saved, described plainly and without inflation.

A tidy CV of technologies with no story about failure reads as shallow to an experienced interviewer. Name a tradeoff you chose badly, and what the next version looked like.

The requirements list is a wish, not a gate. If 5+ years in SRE, infrastructure or backend engineering and deep AWS or Azure experience with Terraform are genuinely yours and the rest are learnable, apply and say so directly in the first line of your cover note. Recruiters respect a candidate who names their own gap before they are asked about it.

Preparing for the Cobalt Systems interviews

Rehearse out loud, not in your head. A senior-level site reliability engineer interview in Austin, TX is largely a test of whether you can explain a decision clearly to someone who was not there.

Research Cobalt Systems specifically. Documented, security-conscious and calm. On-call is compensated and capped, and every incident produces a public write-up within five working days. Tie that back to the site reliability engineer brief: show how you would work inside it, not just that you read about it.

Relocating to Austin, TX

If you are moving to Austin, TX for this site reliability engineer position, treat relocation as a project with its own timeline. Visa processing, housing, schooling and banking all run in parallel, and the one that slips is usually the one you started last.

Most employer sponsorship happens through H-1B (cap-subject, annual lottery), L-1 intracompany transfers, and O-1 for exceptional ability. Green-card sponsorship is common for senior healthcare and engineering roles.

For this specific listing: H-1B transfer and green card sponsorship supported; the company covers legal fees for the employee and dependants.

Ask which days are fixed, whether they are team-wide or personal choice, and how far the office is from the neighbourhoods you would realistically live in. A commute you can do twice a week is a very different decision from one you would do five times. Budget realistically for the first three months in United States as well: deposits, documents and duplicated bills add up faster than people plan for.

Where a Site Reliability Engineer role leads next

A senior-level site reliability engineer in technology & it typically has two credible paths after two to four years: deeper specialisation, where 5+ years in SRE, infrastructure or backend engineering becomes the thing the organisation relies on you for, or breadth, where you take on scope across more people and more surface area.

Neither is objectively better, but they reward different things. Ask how the last two people in this site reliability engineer post progressed — the answer, and whether there is one, tells you a great deal about how Cobalt Systems is run.

Cobalt Systems operates in Austin, Remote (US), London, which matters for a site reliability engineer if internal mobility or a future move out of Austin, TX is part of your plan. If a move is your long-term aim, say so early; employers plan around ambition they know about.