---
title: 'Director, Site Reliability Engineering at Aiven'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-site-reliability-engineering-aiven-helsinki-rjwbatd4vnvs'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Director, Site Reliability Engineering at Aiven

- **Company:** Aiven
- **Location:** Helsinki, Finland
- **Posted:** 2026-04-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://aiven.io/careers/job/4838490101?gh_jid=4838490101

## Job description

We’re a global team of over 400 people, working together to push the boundaries of open-source technology and multi-cloud solutions. Our vision is to help developers, builders, and creators bring their ideas to life with speed and simplicity, by providing a cloud data platform that makes open-source databases, search, streaming, and application infrastructure easily accessible to everyone.

The Role:

We are seeking a Director of Site Reliability Engineering to lead a global organization responsible for the reliability and operational excellence of the Aiven platform globally. You will lead a high-performing SRE team, setting the vision and strategy to ensure resilient, scalable, and highly automated systems across our 24/7/365 operations.

Your team will proactively manage platform health, lead incident response and cross-functional coordination, and drive continuous improvement in reliability and performance. As a senior leader, you will partner closely with engineering, product, and support teams worldwide, influence system architecture, and invest in tooling and automation to reduce toil and enhance production reliability.

This role combines strategic leadership, customer centricity, and deep operational accountability, with a focus on delivering reliable services at global scale while developing strong technical leaders within your organization.

What You'll Do:

- Define and drive global SRE operating strategy in partnership with regional SRE leaders across EMEA, AMER and APAC, ensuring alignment on reliability goals, operating models, and execution across a 24/7/365 follow-the-sun organization.
- Build and lead a multi-regional SRE organization through managers, developing leadership capability, mentoring team, and ensuring consistent performance, culture, and delivery across geographies.
- Set the vision and roadmap for reliability engineering, enabling teams to deliver high-impact tools, automation, and process initiatives that improve platform resilience, scalability, and efficiency.
- Own global incident management strategy and operating model, including on-call design, coverage, and escalation frameworks, ensuring seamless coordination and high availability across regions.
- Establish a metrics-driven operating cadence, defining KPIs/SLIs/SLOs/Error Budget, driving data-informed prioritization, and embedding operational rigor and continuous improvement across the SRE organization.

What We're Looking For:

- Proven experience leading and scaling global SRE or infrastructure organizations through managers, ideally across multiple regions and time zones.
- Strong track record of defining and executing reliability strategy at scale, including ownership of SLIs/SLOs, incident management frameworks, and operational excellence programs.
- Demonstrated ability to build, develop, and mentor senior leaders, creating high-performing, inclusive teams and strong leadership pipelines.
- Experience operating in a 24/7/365 production environment, with deep understanding of follow-the-sun models, on-call design, and large-scale incident response.
- Ability to partner cross-functionally at the executive level (Engineering, Product, Support) to influence architecture, prioritization, and long-term platform investments.
- Strong data-driven leadership approach, with experience defining SLI/SLOs and using metrics to drive prioritization, accountability, and continuous improvement.
- Solid technical foundation in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and automation, with the ability to engage credibly with senior engineers and influence technical direction.
- Experience driving large-scale change and organizational design, including scaling teams, evolving operating models, and improving efficiency and reliability at company level.

Amazing! What’s next:

If you think Aiven is the place for you and that our[Values](https://aiven.io/careers) align with yours, send us your resume and we’ll get in touch!

Global Benefits:

Our global benefits are designed to help you thrive and grow, personally and professionally:

- Participate in Aiven’s equity plan.
- Balance work and life with our hybrid work policy.
- Choose the equipment you need to set yourself up for success.
- Use your Professional Development Plan budget for learning opportunities.
- Receive holistic wellbeing support through our global Employee Assistance Program.
- Inquire about our Global Time Off Commitment (Parental and Sick Leave, as well as Personal Time)
- Enjoy country-specific benefits for our global cast.

How to Recognize and Avoid Employment Scams:

There has been a rise in fake job postings used by scammers to get personal information. At Aiven, all of our emails relating to recruitment come from an @aiven.io, @greenhouse.io or @eu.greenhouse.io domain and all of our interviews are conducted by video call or in person.  Our interviews will never occur via text or chat. If you’re unsure of the legitimacy of a job opportunity/offer pertaining to Aiven, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at recruitment@aiven.io.

Equal Opportunities:

Aiven provides equal employment opportunities to all qualified employees and applicants for employment without regard to age, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability, marital and family status or without regard to any other similar personal attributes. Aiven complies with applicable local laws governing non-discrimination in employment in every location in which the company operates. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, training and any other terms and conditions related to employment.

At Aiven we are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities or special needs in our working environment and job application procedures. We make all reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities or who otherwise need support to thrive in the workplace. We are committed to continuously improving workplace accessibility. There is an option to request a discussion in the application process but if you have any questions before applying please write to us at recruitment@aiven.io.

## About Aiven

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Aiven provides an AI-ready, fully managed open-source data platform that lets organizations stream, store, and serve data across major cloud providers.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series D; total funding $420M)
- **Headquarters**: Helsinki, Finland
- **Founded**: 2016
- **Founders**: Oskari Saarenmaa, Hannu Valtonen, Heikki Nousiainen

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Cloud data infrastructure – open-source managed services (PostgreSQL, Kafka, Valkey, etc.)
- **Target customers**: B2B – from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises across over 60 countries
- **Mission statement**: To make open-source databases, search, streaming, and application infrastructure easily accessible to everyone on any cloud.

## Products & Services
- **Aiven Platform**: Unified control plane to deploy, manage, and govern open-source data services across AWS, GCP, and Azure (SaaS).
- **Managed Open Source Data Services**: Fully managed Apache Kafka, PostgreSQL, Valkey (Redis), OpenSearch, M3, and more – deployable in over 100 regions.
- **Security & Compliance**: End-to-end encryption, dedicated VMs, ISO 27001, SOC2, GDPR compliance.
- **DevOps-friendly tools**: API, CLI, Terraform provider, Kubernetes operator for infrastructure-as-code.
- **Observability**: Built-in integrations with Prometheus, Grafana, and third-party monitoring tools.
- **Aiven Startup Program**: Up to $100,000 in credits for early-stage startups.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Unicorn status (valuation > $1B implied), last funding round in 2021 – exact figure not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue ~€65.1M (latest available), total funding $420M.
- **Notable Investors**: Lifeline Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, IVP, Atomico, World Innovation Lab.
- **Growth Signals**: 374 employees (+7.9% YoY); operating in 26 countries; acquired Klaw (2022) to add schema registry capabilities; strong hiring across engineering, sales, and product roles.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Open-source foundation**: Avoids vendor lock-in; community-driven innovation.
- **Multi-cloud native**: One platform works on AWS, GCP, and Azure – customers can choose or switch.
- **AI-ready platform**: Built to support streaming, storage, and serving for modern AI/ML workloads.
- **Developer experience**: API-first, CLI, Terraform support, and extensive documentation.
- **Enterprise compliance**: SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR – trusted by regulated industries.

## Strategic Focus
- Accelerate the “AI-ready open source data platform” narrative.
- Expand geographic presence (new hubs in Austin, Toronto, Singapore, etc.).
- Deepen product ecosystem – managed Valkey, better analytics and search services.
- Scale go-to-market through partnerships and startup programs.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Open-source ethos – “Think Sideways”, “Invent and Impress”, “Get it done, together”. Described as a “Cast of Crabs” – diverse, curious, and collaborative.
- **Work model**: Hybrid-friendly with offices in Helsinki (HQ), Berlin, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Singapore, Sydney, Auckland, Austin, Toronto.
- **Benefits**: Stock options for permanent employees, private health & dental, individual learning budget, access to e-learning platforms, coaching, and a company library.
- **Perks**: Free drinks, treats, and fruit in offices; flexible working hours.
- **Engineering culture**: Open source contributions, SRE excellence, autonomy with accountability.

## Sources
1. [aiven.io/about](https://aiven.io/about)
2. [aiven.io/careers](https://aiven.io/careers)
3. [linkedin.com/company/aiven](https://www.linkedin.com/company/aiven)
4. [crunchbase.com/organization/aiven](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/aiven)

## Other roles at Aiven

- [Fullstack Software Engineer, Kafka](https://feeny.ai/job/fullstack-software-engineer-kafka-aiven-helsinki-jjzq55v4ynjp) — Helsinki, Finland
- [Senior Software Engineer, Aiven Context](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-aiven-context-aiven-helsinki-5qrbqb54qgs2) — Helsinki, Finland
- [Senior Software Engineer - ClickHouse](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-clickhouse-aiven-helsinki-s9mbpek0gcg9) — Helsinki, Finland
- [Pricing and Packaging Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/pricing-and-packaging-manager-aiven-helsinki-kddvt7qrpzvx) — Helsinki, Finland
- [Talent Acquisition Partner - GTM](https://feeny.ai/job/talent-acquisition-partner-gtm-aiven-austin-texas-52rcbk6jrtn0) — Austin Texas, United States / Ireland
- [Director of Revenue Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-revenue-marketing-aiven-ireland-yaxfj3dnrp87) — Ireland
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- [Manager, Sales Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/manager-sales-operations-aiven-ireland-px8svm8r6bev) — Ireland