Sr. Director - Site Reliability Engineering

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Summary: As the Senior Director of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), you will lead a team of SREs to ensure the highest level of performance and reliability of our services. You will be responsible for the end-to-end availability and performance of mission-critical services and building automation to prevent problem recurrence. The role requires a strategic leader who can create a vision for the SRE function and drive a culture of ‘automation first’ to improve the scalability and stability of our systems.

Essential Functions:

• Lead and scale the SRE team, setting objectives and key results that align with the company’s strategic goals.
• Develop and implement SRE policies, standards, and best practices for enterprise-wide systems.
• Define standards for building reliable applications that are highly available and resilient.
• Drive the adoption of a DevSecOps culture, fostering collaboration between development and operations teams.
• Oversee the design and implementation of solutions for system monitoring, logging, alerting, and incident response.
• Collaborate with product development teams to ensure reliability and scalability are considered at the design phase.
• Manage on-call rotations, incident management processes, and post-mortem analyses to ensure continuous improvement.
• Define Service Level Objectives (SLOs), Service Level Indicators (SLIs), and Error Budgets for all critical services.
• Work closely with the security team to ensure compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements.
• Lead initiatives to improve CI/CD pipelines and automate infrastructure provisioning and deployment.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to team members, encouraging professional growth and technical excellence.
• Extensive use of GenAI in predective analysis of transactions, volumes, incidents and Using GenAI for triaging customer escalations, leveraging GenAI for architecture reviews, code analysis, design reviews, building and maintaining GenAI based tools

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.

Basic Qualifications:
12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 10 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters/MBA /JD/MD), or a minimum of 5 years of work experience with a PhD

Preferred Qualifications
15 or more years of experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 12 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, or MD), PhD with 9+ years of experience
Minimum of 10 years in a site reliability engineering role with at least 5 years in a leadership position managing large SRE teams.
Proficiency in system design and architecture, particularly in a cloud environment.
Expertise in automation and orchestration systems like Kubernetes, Terraform, and Ansible.
Strong coding skills in languages such as Go, Python, Ruby, or Java.
Deep understanding of networking concepts and protocols.
Experience with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines and tools.
Proven track record of leading teams through complex system outages and scalability challenges.
Ability to mentor and grow an SRE team, fostering a culture of continuous learning and innovation.
Strong project management skills, with experience in Agile methodologies.
Excellent verbal and written communication abilities.
Proficient in creating technical documentation and system diagrams.
Experience presenting to C-level executives and stakeholders.
Demonstrated experience in incident management and post-mortem analysis.
Commitment to high availability, fault tolerance, and reliability in all aspects of work.
Knowledge of compliance and security best practices in a highly regulated industry.
Certifications in cloud technologies (AWS, GCP, Azure).
Contributions to open-source projects or public speaking at relevant tech conferences.
Strategic thinker with a vision for the future of SRE within the organization.
Resilient and adaptable in the face of changing technology landscapes.
Collaborative mindset with a focus on cross-functional partners

Work Hours: Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements: This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements: This position will be performed in an office setting.  The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer.  Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.  Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

Visa will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable local law, including the requirements of Article 49 of the San Francisco Police Code.

U.S. APPLICANTS ONLY: The estimated salary range for a new hire into this position is 204,500.00 to 296,700.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity. Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401 (k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.