Principal Site Reliability Engineer (AI-first SRE)

Groupon is modernizing its global platform, with reliability at the core of this transformation. We are seeking a Principal Site Reliability Engineer to lead the shift from reactive maintenance to predictive, AI-driven resilience. This role involves designing intelligent, self-healing systems to prevent incidents, ensuring fast, secure, and reliable customer experiences across millions of daily interactions. You will architect highly available systems, leverage AI/ML for infrastructure governance, build AIOps pipelines, and lead chaos engineering programs to enhance revenue resilience.

Must Have

• Architect and maintain self-healing systems with 99.9%+ availability targets.
• Use AI/ML to automate infrastructure governance and detect configuration or IaC anti-patterns.
• Implement adaptive SLIs/SLOs that evolve automatically from real-time data.
• Build AIOps-based observability and auto-remediation pipelines.
• Apply predictive modeling to forecast failures before they impact users.
• Lead chaos, performance, and resilience testing programs.
• Map platform and service behavior to revenue impact and drive improved revenue resilience.
• Mentor engineers and drive reliability standards across teams.
• Partner with platform, data, and product teams to ensure stability aligns with business goals.
• Support major incident response, incident review, and participate in on-call rotations.
• 10+ years in software/systems engineering, including 5+ years in SRE or platform reliability.
• Strong experience with GCP (preferred) or AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform.
• Proficiency in Python or Go for automation and tooling.
• Deep understanding of observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) and service meshes (Istio, Envoy).
• Hands-on AIOps experience: anomaly detection, predictive analytics, ML-assisted operations.
• Strong communication and influencing skills.

Good to Have

• Experience with MLOps or large-scale data infrastructure.
• Exposure to FinOps or cloud cost optimization.
• Previous leadership of global incident response or SRE transformation programs.

Perks & Benefits

• Opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies in a transformative environment.
• A collaborative and innovative work culture that values your expertise and contributions.
• Professional growth and leadership development pathways tailored to your aspirations.
• A chance to leave a lasting impact by shaping the future of reliable and scalable systems.

Groupon is a marketplace where customers discover new experiences and services everyday and local businesses thrive. To date we have worked with over a million merchant partners worldwide, connecting over 16 million customers with deals across various categories. In a world often dominated by e-commerce giants, we stand out as one of the few platforms uniquely committed to helping local businesses succeed on a performance basis.

Groupon is on a radical journey to transform our business with relentless pursuit of results. Even with thousands of employees spread across multiple continents, we still maintain a culture that inspires innovation, rewards risk-taking and celebrates success. The impact here can be immediate due to our scale and the speed of our transformation. We're a "best of both worlds" kind of company. We're big enough to have the resources and scale, but small enough that a single person has a surprising amount of autonomy and can make a meaningful impact.

About the Role

Groupon is modernizing its global platform — and reliability is at the center of that transformation. We’re looking for a Principal Site Reliability Engineer to lead the evolution from reactive maintenance to predictive, AI-driven resilience.

You’ll design intelligent, self-healing systems that prevent incidents before they happen, ensuring our customers enjoy fast, secure, and reliable experiences across millions of daily interactions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Architect and maintain self-healing systems with 99.9%+ availability targets.
• Use AI/ML to automate infrastructure governance and detect configuration or IaC anti-patterns.
• Implement adaptive SLIs/SLOs that evolve automatically from real-time data.
• Build AIOps-based observability and auto-remediation pipelines.
• Apply predictive modeling to forecast failures before they impact users.
• Lead chaos, performance, and resilience testing programs.
• Map platform and service behavior to revenue impact and drive improved revenue resilience through better infrastructure performance.
• Mentor engineers and drive reliability standards across teams.
• Partner with platform, data, and product teams to ensure stability aligns with business goals.
• Support major incident response, incident review, and participate in on-call rotations.

Key Requirements:

• 10+ years in software/systems engineering, including 5+ years in SRE or platform reliability.
• Strong experience with GCP (preferred) or AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform.
• Proficiency in Python or Go for automation and tooling.
• Deep understanding of observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) and service meshes (Istio, Envoy).
• Hands-on AIOps experience: anomaly detection, predictive analytics, ML-assisted operations.
• Strong communication and influencing skills — data over hierarchy.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with MLOps or large-scale data infrastructure.
• Exposure to FinOps or cloud cost optimization.
• Previous leadership of global incident response or SRE transformation programs.

What Success Looks Like

• 99.9%+ uptime sustained through predictive rather than reactive responses.
• Faster MTTR via automated detection and auto-remediation.
• Reliability insights used in leadership decisions.
• Mentorship leading to stronger reliability practices across teams.

We Are Interested In

• Technologists who see reliability as a product, not just a metric.
• Engineers who use AI/ML as a tool for scale and insight.
• Leaders who can balance innovation speed with operational excellence.
• Engineers who understand the entire e-commerce stack and how it impacts revenue.

What We Offer:

• The opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies in a transformative environment.
• A collaborative and innovative work culture that values your expertise and contributions.
• Professional growth and leadership development pathways tailored to your aspirations.
• A chance to leave a lasting impact by shaping the future of reliable and scalable systems.

Join us to push the boundaries of platform reliability and drive meaningful change in a fast-evolving digital world!