Director - System Reliability Engineering

Job Title: Director of System Reliability Engineering
Location: Santa Clara, CA (Hybrid)
Reports To: SVP of Engineering

About Picarro:
Picarro is a global leader in high-precision analytics instruments and solutions, enabling customers to measure greenhouse gases, air quality, and industrial emissions with unrivaled accuracy. We are driven by innovation and committed to delivering products that help address some of the world's most critical environmental challenges.

Position Overview:
We are seeking a seasoned Director of System Reliability Engineering (SRE) to lead and scale our reliability engineering function. In this role, you will own the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of Picarro's systems reliability strategy across our hardware, software, and cloud-based analytics platforms. You will partner closely with product, engineering, manufacturing, and support teams to ensure our solutions meet the highest standards of uptime, performance, and quality.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and grow the System Reliability Engineering team, providing technical leadership, mentorship, and career development.
• Define and execute the SRE vision, strategy, and roadmap aligned with Picarro's product and business goals.
• Automate deployments, consistent scaling, provisioning, and monitoring with IaC (Terraform/Ansible)
• Establish and enforce best practices for AI-assisted software development, DevOps, and operational monitoring
• Establish and own reliability metrics (SLAs, SLOs, SLIs) for all critical systems.
• Collaborate with software, hardware, manufacturing, and QA teams to drive root cause analysis, incident management, and postmortem processes.
• Implement reliability best practices across product lifecycle, including design-for-reliability, failure mode analysis, and accelerated testing.
• Lead continuous improvement efforts, driving automation in monitoring, alerting, and deployment pipelines.
• Drive cross-functional initiatives to improve system availability, scalability, and performance.
• Manage system capacity planning, load testing, and performance optimization.
• Champion a culture of reliability, accountability, and proactive risk management.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
• 10+ years of experience in systems engineering, site reliability engineering, or hardware reliability.
• 5+ years of leadership experience managing high-performing technical teams.
• Strong understanding of hardware-software integration, embedded systems, and cloud platforms.
• Proven experience with reliability engineering practices (FMEA, MTBF analysis, HALT/HASS testing).
• Deep knowledge of incident management, monitoring, observability, and automation tools.
• Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills.
• Experience working in a fast-paced product development or manufacturing environment.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience in instrumentation, IoT, or high-tech manufacturing companies.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and DevOps/SRE tooling.
• Knowledge of environmental monitoring, gas measurement, or industrial applications.

What We Offer:

• Competitive compensation and equity package
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision plans
• 401(k) with company match
• Generous paid time off and flexible work arrangements
• Opportunity to make a meaningful impact on environmental sustainability

About Picarro:

We are the world's leader in timely, trusted, and actionable data using enhanced optical spectroscopy. Our solutions are used in various applications, including natural gas leak detection, ethylene oxide emissions monitoring, semiconductor fabrication, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, atmospheric science, air quality, greenhouse gas measurements, food safety, hydrology, ecology, and more. Our software and hardware are designed and manufactured in Santa Clara, California. They are used in over 90 countries worldwide based on over 65 patents related to cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) technology. They are unparalleled in their precision, ease of use, and reliability.

At Picarro, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, national origin, protected veteran status, gender identity, social orientation, or disability. Posted positions are not open to third-party recruiters/agencies, and unsolicited resume submissions will be considered free referrals.

At Picarro, we strive to ensure that all individuals, regardless of their abilities, have equal opportunities. If you are an individual with a disability and require reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process or are limited in the ability or unable to access or use this online application process and need an alternative method for applying, please contact Picarro, Inc. atdisabilityassistance@picarro.comfor assistance.