Site Reliability Engineer

Close is a bootstrapped, profitable, 100% remote, ~100 person team of thoughtful individuals who prioritize taking ownership and making a meaningful impact. We’re eager to make a product our customers fall in love with over and over again.

We 💛 small scaling businesses. Since 2013, we’ve been building a CRM that focuses on better communication, without the hassle of manual data entry or a complex UI. We are out to supercharge sales productivity with the most modern, thoughtfully designed, all-in-one, communication-focused CRM. Our backend tech stack consists primarily of Python Flask web apps with our TaskTiger scheduler handling many of the backend asynchronous task processing chores. Our data stores include MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, and Redis. The underlying infrastructure runs on AWS using a combination of managed services like EKS, MSK, RDS and ElasticCache and non-managed services running on EC2 instances. We have CI/CD pipelines that build Docker images, run automated tests and deploy to Kubernetes clusters. We also use these images in our local development environment allowing coding locally against all of our services. We have a well-documented public API that is consumed by our front-end JavaScript app as well as numerous integrations. Our infrastructure is heavily automated using Terraform, Ansible and other AWS tools.

Our product development process is inspired by Shape Up. We love open sourcing our code and ideas on our GitHub and on The Making of Close, our behind-the-scenes Product & Engineering blog. Check out our open source projects like close-mongo-ops-manager, SocketShark, TaskTiger, LimitLion and ciso8601.

You will be joining the Infrastructure Team at Close. This team builds and maintains the platform that runs all Close systems (and do we have a lot of those). Work with us and you’ll be working with:

• Multi-terrabyte MongoDB, PostgreSQL, and Elasticsearch clusters

• Telemetry systems built on Grafana’s LGTM stack and ClickHouse processing over 130 TB per month

• Multiple Kubernetes clusters running tens of thousands of pods

• Github Actions & ArgoCD powered CI/CD that can go from merged, to production, to rolled back in 10 minutes

• A system that is stable, up to date, and hasn’t needed scheduled downtime in 4 years

• You are a rock in the storm. With your hard won expertise, gained through battles won and lost, you consistently build robust systems from quality components fit to underpin mission critical applications. You value simplicity over familiarity. You value resilience over speed. You take pride in building composable and maintainable tools.

• You’ve worked with a diverse array of infrastructure tools and systems, including:

  • CICD (CircleCI, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD)

  • Configuration Management (Ansible, Terraform)

  • Databases (Elasticsearch, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse)

  • Cloud Computing (Kubernetes, AWS)

  • Telemetry (Loki, Tempo, Grafana, Mimir/Prometheus)

• You're comfortable working in a fast-paced environment with a small and talented team where you're supported in your efforts to grow professionally. You're able to manage time well, communicate effectively, and collaborate in a fully distributed team.

• Fully automating our database’s lifecycles with Argo Workflow

• Eliminating all static credentials where they may be

• Reducing downtime and disruption due to maintenance or disaster to new lows

• Help us improve our multi-region disaster recovery system.

• Senior 1 & 2 level candidates should have 5+ years of experience building modern infrastructure systems.

• Staff level candidates should have 8+ years of experience.

• The buck stops with you! You are the kind of person who is respected as an expert on the systems you run.

• You have been the final point of escalation in the support of mission critical production systems

• You are familiar with some of the following technologies: AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Ansible, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch

• You have a strong grasp of common networking and data transfer protocols such as DNS, HTTP, TCP

• You are able to speak and write in English

• You are located in the USA (ET, CT, MT, PT)

• Contributed open source code related to our tech stack.

• Have experience maintaining very large databases

• Has been through a successful disaster response

• Have experience with multi-region architectures

• Have run MLOps systems

• Experience scaling Temporal

• Competitive compensation including an organization-wide goal-based bonus

• Paid Time Off: 5 Weeks PTO upon joining + Winter Holiday Break and Summer Holiday Break. Each year with the company, you’ll receive 2 additional PTO days

• 80% Work Option: Work with your manager to choose between working 5 day weeks (standard full-time) or 4 day weeks @ 80% pay

• Paid Parental Leave for primary and secondary caregivers

• Sabbatical: After 5 years with the team, you’re eligible for a 1 month paid sabbatical 

• Healthcare (US residents): Medical, Dental, Vision with HSA option (US residents), Dependent care FSA (US residents)

• 401k (US residents): We match 6% contributions with immediate vesting

Build a house you want to live in - Examine long-term thinking and action

No BS - Practice transparency and honesty, especially when it’s hard

Invest in each other - Build successful relationships with your coworkers and customers

Discipline equals freedom - Keep your word to yourself and others

Strive for greatness - Constantly challenge yourself and others

Listen to our CEO and Founder, Steli Efti, tell the story of Close’s journey in the $0-30m Blueprint. 

Watch our culture video from our 2023 team retreat in Milan. Every year our entire team gathers in person to build connection, foster cross-functional collaboration, and have fun. In 2025, we’re headed to Paris, France. 

Explore our product. You can watch a ten-minute video demo on our home page.

We ask a few role-specific questions as part of our application process. These questions are designed to help us learn more about you from the start so please answer each question thoughtfully. We see this as an opportunity to get to know you beyond your resume.

While we are excited by all the opportunities that generative AI has unlocked, we request that you refrain from relying on AI tools when completing an application. Every application is read closely by humans and any obviously AI generated applications will be disregarded.

Regardless of fit, you can expect to hear back from our team with an update on the status of your candidacy. 

If you progress to the interview process, you’ll receive a full outline of the role-specific interview process in your first touchpoint with us. We do our best to make the hiring process clear and human.