---
title: 'Site Reliability Engineer at Picogrid'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/site-reliability-engineer-picogrid-el-segundo-ywcsgm0qs5hf'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Site Reliability Engineer at Picogrid

- **Company:** Picogrid
- **Location:** El Segundo, CA
- **Compensation:** $170k–$195k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-07-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/picogrid/e952a0e7-841c-4fb9-ac2e-a9bb2f35bce5

## Job description

## Who we are

Picogrid is a leading venture-backed defense technology company founded to bridge the decades-long gap between modern technology and the critical demands of national security. Today, we're building the essential infrastructure to unify sensors, autonomy, and operators with our technology deployed in active operations around the world. Our mission is to deliver an operational advantage to secure the United States and its allies.

## ABOUT THE ROLE

As Picogrid's first Site Reliability Engineer you will own production reliability across cloud and edge, from observability and incident response through node lifecycle, stateful workloads, and a fleet of hardware edge devices in the field. You will help build and define the systems, processes and best practices that ensure Picogrid's systems can be relied upon by our warfighters in even the toughest battlefield conditions. You will work with engineers to build a strong on-call culture where issues are root caused swiftly, and ensure our alerting and monitoring have exceptional coverage and signal-to-noise ratio.

Security is a shared responsibility across all our DevSecOps roles, and as part of a scrappy startup team you will be expected to help stand up new infrastructure and other related DevSecOps tasks as needed.

## RESPONSIBILITIES

- Own, define and drive our reliability SLIs and SLOs for cloud deployments
- Own, define and drive our reliability SLIs and SLOs for our edge devices deployed in remote and sometimes contested areas
- Own the observability stack: Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, and OpenTelemetry, with dashboards versioned in git and alerting rules checked in alongside the code they watch
- Participate in on-call and incident response: log-first troubleshooting, blameless postmortems, and follow-up hardening
- Encode reliability into infrastructure as code

## REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

- 3+ years of experience as an SRE or related roles
- Deep Kubernetes operations experience: node lifecycle, workload scheduling, StatefulSets, graceful drains, and live cluster debugging
- Experience designing comprehensive observability dashboards and high signal-to-noise ratio alerting rules
- You are a competent and experienced incident responder practicing methodical evidence-first triage, blameless postmortems, and turning incidents into durable guardrails
- Production Terraform or OpenTofu experience
- Fluent in AWS including IAM, networking, multi-account environments, and account and workload hardening
- Experience managing high availability database deployments
- IoT or edge fleet operation experience
- Comfortable operating in scrappy, fast-paced environments, and turning ambiguous requirements into concrete solutions
- You optimize for providing value early in projects and short iteration cycles

## PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- GovCloud, FIPS, or other regulated or air-gapped environment experience
- Constrained edge hardware such as NVIDIA Jetson platforms (AGX Thor, Orin Nano), including shared CPU and GPU memory and thermal constraints
- Overlay or mesh networking operations: Nebula, WireGuard, Tailscale, or similar
- Standing up SLO and error-budget tooling (sloth, Pyrra, or equivalent) from scratch
- Active security clearance

## COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

- Base salary range: $170,000 - $195,000 per year. Base salary is just one part of your total compensation package at Picogrid.
- Significant stock options with a high potential upside as an early-stage company
- 401(k) with employer matching
- Full health coverage (medical, dental, and vision insurance)
- Relocation assistance provided (if applicable)
- Unlimited PTO (two-week minimum) and 11 paid holidays per year
- Paid parental leave for both parents
- Lunch provided when working in-office and a fully stocked kitchenette
- Free EV charging at the HQ
- Unique office in El Segundo, CA stocked with quality coffee, snacks, and craft beer

## EXPORT CONTROL REQUIREMENTS

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

## EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY (EEO) POLICY

Picogrid is committed to providing a professional work environment free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. We are an equal opportunity employer and make all employment decisions based on merit, qualifications, and business needs.

## #LI-DNP

## Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Policy

Picogrid is committed to providing a professional work environment free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. We are an equal opportunity employer and make all employment decisions based on merit, qualifications, and business needs.

## About Picogrid

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Picogrid builds an open integration platform that connects sensors, unmanned systems, and command nodes across land, sea, air, and space for defense and public safety missions.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: El Segundo, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2020
- **Founders**: Zane Mountcastle (CEO) and Martin Slosarik (Co-Founder)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: Defense and Space Manufacturing, National Security, Public Safety
- **Target customers**: US and allied military forces, defense vendors, government agencies (B2G)
- **Mission**: Protect service members and civilians by making mission-critical systems work as one – because speed and cohesion are essential.

## Products & Services
- **Picogrid Platform**: A family of hardware and software products that integrate physical and digital assets. Enables fast deployment, seamless coordination, and edge-to-cloud operations across domains (air defense, base security, SIGINT, wildfire intelligence, human-machine teaming).
- **Orion**: A dual-use partner ecosystem that unifies legacy and next-gen satellites, sensors, drones, and C2 systems into a standardized, real-time operational picture.
- **Legion**: An API layer that allows third-party hardware and software to plug into Picogrid’s ecosystem, enabling rapid integration of new capabilities.
- **Expeditionary C2 Nodes**: Ruggedized hardware for field-deployed command-and-control, connecting edge devices and legacy systems.
- **Custom Solutions**: Tailored integrations for specific missions (e.g., wildfire response, air defense networks).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – **$57.31M** (including $45M Series A announced May 29, 2026, led by Bessemer Venture Partners)
- **Notable Investors**: Bessemer Venture Partners (lead Series A), Initialized Capital (seed lead), Starburst Ventures, Credo Ventures, Giant Step Capital, Alumni Ventures, Washington Harbour, GSBackers, and industry angels.
- **Growth Signals**: 103.3% YoY headcount growth (45 employees); 24 active job postings (+140% YoY); deployed globally with US and allied forces; integration ecosystem spans 100+ defense systems (Skydio, Northrop Grumman, Echodyne, CX2, Neros); recent integration of Ukraine-proven Shahed interceptors; partnerships with Hoverfly for persistent aerial detection.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Open integration layer**: Hardware-agnostic, vendor-neutral platform that eliminates the “seams” between proprietary systems – a central bottleneck in modern defense.
- **Dual-use ecosystem**: Already trusted by elite operators and used in active operations, giving Picogrid real-world credibility that is hard for new entrants to replicate.
- **Speed of deployment**: Products are designed for rapid field integration, reducing the time from procurement to operational capability.
- **Broad domain coverage**: Land, sea, air, space, and cyber (SIGINT) – a unified approach across all operational domains.

## Strategic Focus
- Expand the product family and integration capabilities into new operational domains (e.g., space, undersea).
- Scale manufacturing in California and Oklahoma to meet growing demand from US forces and allies.
- Deepen the partner ecosystem to attract more defense vendors onto the platform, reinforcing network effects.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven work**: “Build systems that protect lives” – employees directly contribute to national security and public safety.
- **Rapid growth**: 103% headcount growth YoY, indicating strong trajectory and opportunity for impact.
- **Technical challenges**: Work spans edge software, field hardware, AI/ML, autonomy, and systems integration – appealing to engineers who want to solve hard problems.
- **Culture**: Emphasis on speed, cohesion, and operational relevance. The company values hands-on builders and mission partners.
- **Remote/Hybrid/Office**: Not explicitly stated, but headquarters in El Segundo, CA with additional locations in Oklahoma and Ukraine. Likely a mix of on-site and field deployment roles.
- **Notable perks**: Not detailed, but the engineering culture is described as building edge software and field hardware that shapes the future of defense.

## Sources
1. [picogrid.com](https://picogrid.com/)
2. [picogrid.com/careers](https://picogrid.com/careers)
3. [picogrid.com/mission](https://picogrid.com/mission)
4. [linkedin.com/company/picogrid](https://www.linkedin.com/company/picogrid)
5. [cbinsights.com/company/picogrid](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/picogrid)

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