Remote SRE at Orkes - EMEA & Australia Role — Columbus
Traveler-Friendly Insight
Remote-Friendly with Meaningful Travel
This SRE role at Orkes is explicitly remote and open to candidates across Australia and the EMEA region — a wide geographic spread that suits experienced nomads with a home base in one of these zones. The role requires 15–20% travel, which translates to roughly 8–10 weeks per year — something to factor into your nomad planning, as you'll need flexibility for occasional on-sites or team meetups.
Timezone Considerations
SRE roles inherently involve on-call rotations and incident response, which often requires being reachable during business hours for your region. The EMEA + Australia coverage suggests Orkes wants timezone-compatible engineers for those regions. Nomads should plan to maintain stable overlap with EMEA (UTC to UTC+3) or APAC (UTC+8 to UTC+11) working hours — not ideal for complete timezone flexibility.
Salary vs. Nomad Cost of Living
- Lisbon, Portugal: At $125K–$250K USD, you'd live very comfortably — monthly costs run ~$2,000–$2,800 for a nomad lifestyle. Portugal's D8 Digital Nomad Visa is a strong fit for EMEA-eligible applicants.
- Bangkok, Thailand: Monthly costs of ~$1,200–$1,800 make this exceptionally affordable on this salary, though Thailand's LTR Visa requires income proof (~$80K/year).
- Medellín, Colombia: At ~$1,500–$2,200/month, your purchasing power is strong, though this role's EMEA/AU restriction may complicate visa pathways.
The lack of a stated coworking or home-office stipend is worth clarifying before accepting.
Who We Are
Building the Backbone of Distributed Applications.
At Orkes, we are reimagining how developers build reliable, scalable, event-driven applications without wrangling complex infrastructure.
Born from Netflix's battle-tested open-source project, OSS Conductor, our platform now powers billions of mission critical workflows across industries like fintech, e-commerce, logistics, and healthcare — helping companies run the core operations of their business with confidence. These are the workflows behind every transaction, every delivery, every patient check-in, quietly orchestrating our digital world.
We're solving some of the hardest infrastructure problems: how do you make distributed systems reliable, observable, and scalable — without every team having to reinvent the wheel? We absorb the complexity of distributed systems, letting teams build with confidence.
We're hiring a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) to help us evolve and scale our platform. If you're passionate about clean, efficient architecture, love solving tough distributed systems challenges, and thrive in an environment where your ideas actually shape the product — we'd love to talk.
What You'll Do
- Own reliability, availability, and performance of production systems running in cloud environments
- Define and monitor SLIs/SLOs and help manage error budgets across the platform
- Lead incident response efforts including detection, triage, mitigation, and postmortems
- Improve observability through logging, monitoring, alerting, and dashboards
- Automate operational workflows and reduce manual toil wherever possible
- Partner closely with engineering teams to improve system resiliency and scalability
- Assist with capacity planning, infrastructure optimization, and performance tuning
- Build internal tooling, runbooks, and operational best practices
- Support Kubernetes-based infrastructure and distributed systems at scale
- Act as an escalation point for complex production and platform issues
What We're Looking For
- 5+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps, Platform Engineering, or related infrastructure roles
- Strong experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and containerized environments
- Strong understanding of distributed systems and microservices architecture
- Experience with observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK, or OpenTelemetry
- Proficiency with infrastructure automation and scripting (Terraform, Python, Bash, etc.)
- Experience managing CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation
- Strong troubleshooting and incident management skills
- Ability to work cross-functionally and communicate effectively during high-pressure situations
Nice to Have
- Experience supporting large-scale SaaS or cloud-native platforms
- Familiarity with workflow orchestration technologies such as Conductor, Temporal, or Camunda
- Experience with Kafka, messaging systems, or event-driven architectures
- Knowledge of security best practices and cloud infrastructure hardening
- Open-source contributions or strong systems engineering background
Why Join Orkes?
- Work alongside a deeply technical and collaborative engineering team
- Solve complex distributed systems challenges at scale
- High ownership and impact in a fast-growing company
- Remote-friendly culture with strong engineering autonomy
- Opportunity to help shape the future of cloud orchestration and AI workflows
More Details
- Base Salary: $125,000–$250,000 USD (variable based on skills, experience, scope, location, and market data)
- Start Date: ASAP
- Status: Full-time
- Type: Remote
- Location: Australia, EMEA
- Department: Engineering
- Reports to: Head of Engineering
- Travel: 15–20%
Benefits
- Comprehensive health coverage including medical, dental, and vision
- Flexible PTO
- Support for personal development
At Orkes, we are committed to building a team that reflects a rich tapestry of perspectives, identities, and professional experiences. We believe that diversity is not just a checkbox, but a driving force behind innovation, creativity, and success. By embracing a variety of backgrounds, we cultivate an inclusive environment where every team member feels valued and empowered to bring their authentic selves to work.
Join us at Orkes and be a part of a team where your unique perspectives are not only welcomed but celebrated. Together we are shaping the future of technology by leveraging the strength that comes from embracing diversity in all its forms. Your journey with us is an opportunity to contribute to something greater and make a lasting impact.
Frequently Asked Questions
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