Team Lead - Site Reliability Engineering

Orbem is an impact-driven deep-tech scaleup with global reach, founded in Munich, Germany and now expanding internationally with our newest office in Houston, Texas. We develop fast, accurate, and accessible imaging solutions that provide access to otherwise unattainable sources of knowledge.

We seek to make a difference – and develop solutions to sustainably feed the world, accelerate the transition to a green economy, and transform disease detection.

Join us on our mission to unleash AI-powered imaging for everything and everyone

Team Lead, Site Reliability Engineering - Edge Infrastructure (f/m/d)

Start date: As soon as possible

Yearly Salary: €90,000 - €100,000 (fixed range, annual gross)

Equity: €40,000 - €80,000 in company shares

Benefits: Up to €5,000 annually

Work model: Full-time, hybrid (based in Munich)

Your Role

As the Team Lead for Site Reliability Engineering, you’ll be the driving force behind Orbem’s mission-critical infrastructure — ensuring our systems run flawlessly across a complex network of on-premises and edge environments. You’ll lead a talented team of SREs, blending hands-on technical expertise with strong people leadership to uphold world-class uptime, performance, and reliability standards.

In this pivotal role, you’ll shape the backbone of Orbem’s technology — keeping the platforms that power our Data, Machine Learning, and Software teams resilient, scalable, and efficient. Your leadership will set the tone for operational excellence, fostering a culture of reliability, collaboration, and continuous improvement that enables innovation at every level of the organisation.

Your day-to-day

Your responsibilities will be split into leadership and technical execution:

People Management:

• Handle all core people management duties, including one-on-ones, performance reviews, career progression, promotions, and conflict resolution.

• Set the technical and architectural direction for the team.

• Organise and manage the team's life and processes, ensuring the team operates without blockers.

Technical Direction & Execution

• Assist the team with technical planning and ticket writing to ensure clarity of expectations and architectural alignment.

• Maintain and enhance the production infrastructure to achieve and sustain high uptime, prioritizing stability over new features.

• Help manage and resolve escalated support and production issues.

• Collaborate with stakeholders (with the eventual support of a Product Manager) to gather requirements and manage technical alignment.

• You'll be instrumental in ensuring the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of our infrastructure, supporting development teams, and troubleshooting complex issues.

• You'll collaborate with various stakeholders, contribute to architectural decisions, and drive continuous improvement initiatives to optimize performance and reduce costs.

• This role requires a deep understanding of edge computing principles, networking, security, and automation.

Your experiences and skills

Fit to our values

• We own every challenge: we enjoy complexity and thrive under uncertainty.

• We strive for better: we seize any opportunity for growth and challenge the status quo. We are constantly learning and improving.

• We imagine new frontiers: we think beyond “doable” and “reasonable”. We design a sustainable and healthy future together.

Technical Skills and Experience

• Container Orchestration: Super proficient in maintaining Kubernetes on edge machines.

• Programming: Fluency in at least one modern language, such as Golang or Python. 

• Monitoring: Deep understanding of concepts and tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. 

• Terraform is a native language to you.

• Linux & Server Expertise: Deep proficiency in Linux-based systems and experience with server hardware, including components like RAID controllers BIOS, and Booting.

• DevOps: Good understanding of release systems and proficiency with GitOps tools like Argo CD.

• Security Management: Proficient in security concepts like certificate management (issuing, lifecycles, etc.).

What makes you stand out from other candidates

• Holistic Data Center Engineering Expertise: Deep understanding of how to deal with low-level hardware like routers, switches, servers, BIOS, and TPM modules .

• Bare-Metal Automation: Proven experience designing and implementing automation for bare-metal infrastructure provisioning.

• Modern Kubernetes & CI/CD Architect: Moves beyond basic deployments to architecting sophisticated, automated, and resilient delivery pipelines using cutting-edge GitOps and Kubernetes-native tooling.

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Mastery: Expert-level proficiency with Terraform to build version-controlled, repeatable, and scalable environments.

Behavioural competencies

• Strategic & Visionary Thinker: Instead of just responding to tickets, you develop a clear vision and strategic roadmap for internal platforms, thinking about the long-term health, scalability, and usability of the tools and services you provide.

• Empathetic Communicator & Collaborator: You excel at building strong relationships with development teams. You proactively gather feedback, clearly communicate changes, and champion the "why" behind your initiatives, ensuring buy-in and smooth adoption.

• High Degree of Ownership: You take end-to-end ownership of the developer experience and the team's output. You are accountable for the reliability, documentation, and continuous improvement of the internal toolchain, treating it with the same rigor as a customer-facing product.

• Conflict Resolution Expertise: Proven ability to manage core people management duties, including effectively handling conflict resolution and managing team dynamics.

• Performance and Growth Management: Demonstrated experience handling one-on-ones, performance reviews, career progression, and promotions.

• Data-Driven Prioritization: You don't guess what developers need; you use data. By analyzing metrics on build times, deployment frequency, and support requests, you make informed decisions to focus on initiatives that deliver the most value.

• Customer-Obsessed: You consistently place the developer experience (DevEx) at the forefront of all planning and execution, actively seeking to understand pain points to create a frictionless engineering environment.

What we offer

International Environment: Join a team with 40+ nationalities across 5 continents, all driven by a shared purpose: shedding light on the world’s toughest challenges.

Attractive Compensation Package:

• Stock Options: Share in Orbem’s success.

• Visa & Relocation Support: Seamless support for your move to Germany.

• Learning & Development: €1,750 annual budget for personal growth.

• Fitness Membership: Access to Urban Sports Club or Wellpass.

• Childcare Reimbursement: Support for Kita/Kindergarten fees.

• Deutschland Ticket: Full coverage of public transportation.

Work-Life Integration:

• Flexible Hours & Home Office: Work when and where it suits you.

• 30 Days Paid Leave: Plenty of time to recharge.

• Personal Leave: Flexibility for life’s important moments.

• Work from Anywhere: Experience new cultures and environments for up to 60 days per year.

Make a Difference: Join an ambitious, fast-growing team working on breakthrough technology. In our scale-up environment, you’ll have the freedom to lead your projects and make an impact. We provide a platform for you to explore, innovate, and define your vision for the future. At Orbem, we’re committed to helping you discover your strengths, and while we aim to teach you, we also want to learn from you. 

Your team

As a Team Lead, SRE, you become part of our diverse and international team. Learn more about the team members, their work, and challenges here: https://orbem.ai/company/  

At Orbem, we're committed to building a smart, diverse team, and we recognize that self-doubt can prevent talented individuals from applying. If you feel you don't meet every requirement, we'd love to hear from you anyway!