---
title: 'Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) at Instrumental, Inc.'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-site-reliability-engineer-sre-instrumental-inc-palo-alto-awbkwm97rjfg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) at Instrumental, Inc.

- **Company:** Instrumental, Inc.
- **Location:** Palo Alto, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-07-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/instrumental-inc-/am9icG9zdDoLtV7I8fsImcuSZU_7vvLH

## Job description

Instrumental builds the manufacturing acceleration platform behind the world’s most complex electronics. We capture digital exhaust and engineering context from assembly lines—images, test logs, BOM data, performance, repair cycles—and our AI engines identify insights that are difficult or impossible for human engineers to find. We accelerate the companies building the AI era by improving manufacturing yield, throughput, and ramp. NVIDIA, Meta, L3Harris, and their manufacturing partners rely on Instrumental to accelerate new product introduction and production.

The Instrumental platform collects, intelligently transforms, and contextually presents manufacturing data to technical end-users, enabling them to optimize their manufacturing process in real-time. Our core technology is proprietary ML algorithms, packaged in an accessible, user-centric user interface – we believe we must have both the best technology and the best access to that technology to win.

Requirements:

- 5 or more years of DevOps or SRE experience deploying and operating commercial SaaS platforms on public cloud infrastructure, AWS preferred.
- Expert knowledge with Linux, shell, containerization, Kubernetes, IaC (terraform preferred), monitoring, logging, and APM tools.
- Proven ability to take initiative and drive impactful projects to completion efficiently and independently.
- Comfort with ambiguity, pace, and frequent pivots inherent in a startup environment, with a track record of creating clarity for teams.
- Experience introducing and integrating AI tools/processes into development and operation workflows.
- Demonstrated skill in setting, iterating on, and measuring KPIs to ensure ongoing performance, reliability and efficiency.
- Network/application security and compliance experience is a plus.

Who You Are:

- Dead serious about performance, scalability, and reliability (PSR): You care deeply about how systems behave in the real world and sweat the details around latency, uptime, and scale.
- Systems engineering & infrastructure expertise: You’ve spent real time building and running distributed systems and know your way around cloud infrastructure, networks, and operating systems.
- Automation, automation, automation: If something is repetitive or error-prone, your first instinct is to automate it and make it disappear.
- Operating in ambiguity & high-growth environments: You’re comfortable making good calls without perfect information and adapting as the system and company grow fast.
- Dependable, trustworthy: People trust you to own problems, show up when things are broken, and follow through.

This position requires access to items and data that are developed under U.S. government contracts and subject to dissemination controls that limit access to U.S. citizens only.

We’re a growing team that works collaboratively, is supportive of each other, and is highly energized by the opportunity for a large impact. We actively work to promote an inclusive environment, valuing passion and the ability to learn. You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t precisely match the job description!

The following is a representative annual base salary range for this position within the Bay Area: $175,000-$205,000. We consider candidates at multiple levels for this role. Job level and salary opportunities are evaluated through our interview process – we review the experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of each applicant.

Instrumental is proud to offer a highly-rated variety of benefits, including health, vision, dental, commuter plans, and parental leave.

At Instrumental, protecting company and customer information is a shared responsibility. Employees are expected to comply with company engineering, security, access control, and privacy policies, and promptly report suspected security incidents or policy violations.

## About Instrumental, Inc.

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Instrumental provides a Manufacturing Engineering Control Platform that uses AI and data to help electronics companies optimize production, reduce waste, and accelerate new product introductions.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2014
- **Founders**: Anna-Katrina Shedletsky (CEO) and Samuel Weiss (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Manufacturing Technology (Hardware + Software + AI), Industrial IoT, Electronics Manufacturing
- **Target customers**: B2B, Enterprise; electronics brands and contract manufacturers producing complex consumer and mission-critical electronics.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To eliminate $8 trillion in manufacturing waste by providing core infrastructure that empowers engineering and operations teams to design, execute, and operate with world-class efficiency [instrumental.com](https://instrumental.com/company/).

## Products & Services
- **Manufacturing Acceleration Platform**: A cloud-based platform that captures inspection, test, and process signals across factory lines, turning them into an engineering dataset for analysis. Key capabilities include:
    - **Discovery-Driven Inspection**: Identifies previously unknown failure modes early in production before they impact yield.
    - **Production Controls**: Deploys tests to intercept known failures and synchronize inspection standards across factories.
    - **Accelerated Failure Analysis**: Uses AI to eliminate potential root causes in minutes, saving up to 90% of time per analysis.
    - **Factory Signal Capture**: Connects data from multiple factories into a single, shared engineering dataset.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding of **$80.3M** across 5 rounds [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/instrumental-inc.).
    - Seed (2015): $2.8M led by Root Ventures, First Round Capital.
    - Series A (2017): $7.5M led by Root Ventures, Eclipse.
    - Series B (2020): $20M led by Canaan Partners.
    - Series C (2022): $50M led by BAM Elevate.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: BAM Elevate, Canaan Partners, Root Ventures, First Round Capital, Eclipse.
- **Growth Signals**:
    - **Headcount**: 70 employees (+10.5% YoY) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/instrumental-inc.).
    - **Customer Wins**: Serves major brands like **NVIDIA** (sped up final assembly by 14 days), **Meta** (saved 900+ engineering weeks annually across 7 programs), and **Toast** (achieved 5.3X ROI) [instrumental.com](https://instrumental.com/).
    - **Active Hiring**: 22 open positions as of the latest data [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/instrumental-inc.).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Deep Domain Expertise**: Founded by ex-Apple product design engineers who experienced the manufacturing waste problem firsthand, giving them unique insight and credibility [instrumental.com](https://instrumental.com/company/).
- **Proven ROI**: Platform delivers measurable, large-scale results for top-tier global brands (e.g., 5.3X ROI, saving hundreds of engineering weeks).
- **First-of-its-Kind Platform**: Instrumental’s platform is described as the "world’s first Manufacturing Engineering Control Platform," combining AI with factory-floor signals in a way that hasn't been done before [instrumental.com](https://instrumental.com/company/).
- **Strong Customer Base**: Counts industry leaders like Axon, Bose, Cisco, Meta, SolarEdge, and ChargePoint as customers [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/instrumental-inc.).

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Scaling the platform to capture more factory signals, deepening AI capabilities for predictive and prescriptive analytics, and expanding its customer base within the complex electronics manufacturing industry.
- **Direction for growth**: Continuing to build the "engineering system for manufacturing" to standardize production knowledge, enable faster scaling, and improve collaboration across global factory networks [instrumental.com](https://instrumental.com/).

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven**: The company is tackling a massive, tangible problem ($8T in waste) with a clear goal to cut it in half. Employees can see the direct impact of their work on global manufacturing efficiency.
- **Culture**: Described as "collaborative, passionate, transparent, and impact-driven." Core values include "Play to Win" and "Default to Action," with a focus on forming authentic connections and celebrating wins [instrumental.com](https://instrumental.com/life-at-instrumental/).
- **Global & Distributed Team**: Offices in Palo Alto, CA and Shenzhen, China. The team works closely across locations, with a strong Slack culture and weekly All-Hands lunches [instrumental.com](https://instrumental.com/careers/).
- **Strong Talent Pool**: Team members come from top-tier companies like Apple, Tesla, Google, Foxconn, and Fictiv, indicating a high-caliber peer group [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/instrumental-inc.).
- **Technical Challenges**: Engineers work on a unique blend of hardware, software, and AI problems at the intersection of physical product design and digital data platforms.

## Sources
1. [Instrumental Company Page](https://instrumental.com/company/)
2. [Instrumental Product Page](https://instrumental.com/)
3. [Instrumental Careers Page](https://instrumental.com/careers/)
4. [Instrumental Life Page](https://instrumental.com/life-at-instrumental/)
5. [LinkedIn Company Profile](https://www.linkedin.com/company/instrumental-inc.)

## Other roles at Instrumental, Inc.

- [Principal Solutions Architect](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-solutions-architect-instrumental-inc-palo-alto-x7x5n7dhzbgx) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Site Reliability Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/site-reliability-engineer-instrumental-inc-palo-alto-rzgc6dd10n8w) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Lead Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-recruiter-instrumental-inc-palo-alto-hb3egtp7gmwn) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Forward Deployed Manufacturing Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-manufacturing-engineer-instrumental-inc-palo-alto-qkkp0neq12jy) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Forward-Deployed Manufacturing Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-manufacturing-engineer-instrumental-inc-cincinnati-h127t233xsgp) — Cincinnati, OH
- [Senior Forward Deployed Engineer - Taiwan](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-forward-deployed-engineer-taiwan-instrumental-inc-taipei-3c3yz8v4w5kn) — Taipei, Taiwan
- [Senior Solutions Design Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-solutions-design-engineer-instrumental-inc-palo-alto-mb1v4pa7e7ty) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Senior Technical Program Manager - Taiwan](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-technical-program-manager-taiwan-instrumental-inc-taipei-xme34y9tftcz) — Taipei, Taiwan
- [Forward-Deployed Manufacturing Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-manufacturing-engineer-instrumental-inc-dallas-pjqx4wcqdj5q) — Dallas, TX
- [Solutions Design Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-design-engineer-instrumental-inc-palo-alto-qn2q7h440tzb) — Palo Alto, CA