Staff Site Reliability Engineer

Dave vs. Goliath. We’re Dave. Dave is a financial app on a mission to build products that level the financial playing field. It is redefining the financial landscape by leveraging technology to create an affordable, transparent, and user-centric access to liquidity for millions of Americans. As a leading innovator in the U.S. financial services sector, Dave’s digital financial platform offers products designed to meet the credit needs of those underserved by traditional financial institutions. Dave’s offerings include its flagship ExtraCash product, providing members up to $500 within minutes. The company is on track to launch several new product offerings in 2026, including a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) option. Dave is focused on serving Americans who are financially vulnerable or living paycheck to paycheck. Dave is leading the charge in creating a new era of credit products that prioritizes speed, affordability, and accessibility, making it the go-to financial partner for those who need it most. The Opportunity This is a senior, deeply hands-on role on a small, high-leverage SRE team (3–4 engineers). You’ll serve as a technical anchor across cloud infrastructure and networking, shaping how reliability, automation, and performance are embedded into every layer of our platform. You won’t just respond to incidents. You’ll design the systems that prevent them. You’ll partner closely with the Director of DevX & Infrastructure Engineering and cross-functional teams to evolve our GCP platform in ways that support product velocity while protecting long-term durability. What You’ll Build and Own Lead architecture and automation across our GCP environment, ensuring reliability, scalability, security, and thoughtful cost management. Define and improve SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets using Cloud Monitoring and Datadog — connecting reliability goals to real business outcomes. Shape our multi-region, disaster recovery, and capacity planning strategies so the platform holds up as we grow. Design and optimize cloud networking, including VPC architecture, ingress/egress, Cloud Armor, VPN, and DNS to support internal systems, partner integrations, and member-facing services. Drive infrastructure-as-code and GitOps practices using Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, and ArgoCD to make deployments predictable and repeatable. Mentor SREs and infrastructure engineers through design reviews, incident retros, and hands-on collaboration — strengthening technical depth across the team. You’ll also explore practical LLM-driven automation where it meaningfully reduces operational toil and shortens incident resolution time. The Impact Reliable systems mean members can access ExtraCash, banking, and credit-building tools when they need them most. Your work directly supports trust, growth, and long-term platform resilience. What we’re looking for Experience & Technical Foundation 8+ years in software, infrastructure, or site reliability engineering. 5+ years of hands-on experience operating production systems in GCP (compute, networking, storage, IAM, observability). Deep experience with Kubernetes (GKE), Helm, containerization, Terraform (IaC), and ArgoCD. Strong programming skills in Python, Go, or TypeScript/JavaScript for automation and internal tooling. Experience defining and operating against SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets. Strong knowledge of relational and distributed databases (e.g., MySQL, Cloud SQL, Cloud Spanner, Redis), including performance tuning and HA strategies. Experience leading incident response, root cause analysis, and systemic remediation. Bonus Experience in fintech or regulated environments Familiarity with CI tooling (GHA, Jenkins, Tekton, CircleCI) Experience in high-growth startups. What Makes Someone Successful Here You take responsibility for outcomes, not just deliverables. You think in systems — how networking decisions affect latency, how reliability targets affect member trust, how cost decisions affect long-term sustainability. You balance urgency with durability and make thoughtful trade-offs that hold up over time. You’re comfortable operating in ambiguity. Not everything is fully defined — and you help shape it. You ask good questions before committing to a path and connect day-to-day execution to broader business goals. You also collaborate naturally. You partner with product engineers, TPMs, and security teams without creating friction. You use feedback to sharpen solutions. You invest in mentoring others because strong systems include strong engineers. What to Expect We move quickly, but not chaotically. Priorities evolve as we learn from data and growth. You’ll have meaningful autonomy and visibility, along with clear accountability and partnership across the organization. Why Join Dave A mission that directly improves members’ financial lives. Real scope on a small, high-impact team. The opportunity to shape platform architecture at a profitable, growing public company. Complex, meaningful technical challenges with long-term influence. Ready to build for the underdog? Don’t let imposter syndrome get in the way of an incredible opportunity. We’re looking for people who can help us achieve our mission and vision, not just check off the boxes. If you’re excited about this role, we encourage you to apply. You may just be the right candidate for this or other roles. Why you’ll love working here: At Dave, our people are just as important as our product. Our culture reflects the values that guide who we are, how we work, and what we aspire to be. Daves are member-centric, helpful, transparent, persistent, and better together. We strive to create an environment where all Daves feel valued, heard, and empowered to do their best work. As a virtual-first company, team members can live and work anywhere in the United States, except Hawaii. A few of our benefits & perks : 💚 Opportunity to tackle tough challenges, learn and grow from fellow top talent, and help millions of people reach their personal financial goals 💻 Flexible hours and virtual-first work culture with a home office stipend 🏥 Premium Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance plans 👶 Generous paid parental and caregiver leave 💰 401(k) savings plan with matching contributions 📈 Financial advisor and financial wellness support 🏖️ Flexible PTO and generous company holidays, including Juneteenth and Winter Break 🎉 All-company in-person events once or twice a year and virtual events throughout to connect with your team members and leadership team Dave Operating LLC is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and is dedicated to cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace. We will consider for employment all qualified applicants and do not discriminate on any basis protected by federal, state, or local law, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance relating to an applicant's criminal history. #LI-REMOTE