--- title: 'Site Reliability Engineer at Specter' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/site-reliability-engineer-specter-san-francisco-ann5r5qhvg19' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-19' --- # Site Reliability Engineer at Specter - **Company:** Specter - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-07-02 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-19 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/specter/5442f447-03cc-4734-b9c1-b6723aa818c8 ## Job description Company Background Specter's mission is to help automate the physical world. Today, we build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that answer any question, anywhere in their environments. Our systems can automatically detect and reason about any physical activity captured on camera, from security incidents (e.g. perimeter intrusion, theft, LPR), to safety monitoring (e.g. PPE detection, injured people), to operational efficiency (e.g. material tracking, congestion monitoring). We offer both long range wireless (1km range) and wired sensor variants to suit any deployment. Our co-founders Xerxes and Philip are passionate about empowering our partners in the fast approaching world of physical AI and robotics. We are a small, fast growing team who hail from Anduril, Tesla, Uber, and the U.S. Special Forces. ## The Role We're hiring a Site Reliability Engineer to own the operational health of our connected sensor platform — spanning a live fleet of edge hardware deployed at customer sites and the cloud infrastructure behind it. This is a high-ownership role at the intersection of ops and platform engineering. You'll drive reliability across our sensor fleet — triaging issues in the field, building the systems that prevent them from recurring, and owning the observability that keeps us ahead of problems as we scale. You set your own priorities across all three: Responsibilities: Reactive — Triage & Recovery - Debug and triage issues across a live fleet of diverse Linux-based sensor nodes and edge appliances deployed at customer sites. - SSH into field hardware to diagnose, patch, and recover systems — often with limited remote access and incomplete information. - Own site bring-ups end to end; be the person who gets things back online. Systems Builder — Close the Loop - Build and maintain fleet management systems: OTA update pipelines, device health tracking, remote diagnostics, and lifecycle tooling. - Identify repeat fires and eliminate them — build tooling, pre-deployment checks, and root cause processes that prevent recurrence. - Automate toil relentlessly: if you're doing something twice, you should be scripting it. - Collaborate with embedded systems, and platform teams to define reliability and deployment requirements. Observability Owner — Fleet Visibility - Design and implement observability (logging, metrics, alerting) across edge devices and cloud infrastructure (AWS). - Surface and close telemetry gaps; build fleet-wide visibility that enables data-driven reliability decisions. - Develop runbooks, incident response procedures, and participate in on-call rotations. Qualifications: - Strong Linux systems administration — comfortable working over SSH in production, not just dev environments. - Experience with edge or on-prem hardware alongside cloud infrastructure. - Solid networking fundamentals: DNS, firewalls, VPNs, subnets, secure remote access. - Scripting or programming in Python, Go, or Bash for operational tooling. - Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes a plus). - Embedded systems experience — reading firmware logs, understanding hardware-software boundaries, and reasoning about what's happening below the OS is a meaningful edge in this role. - Deeper cloud experience (AWS infrastructure, IAM, networking, observability tooling) is a strong plus for owning the cloud side of the fleet. - Rust or C experience — we have firmware in both; being able to read and reason about low-level code accelerates triage significantly. ## About Specter ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Specter builds and deploys long-range wireless sensing networks with AI-powered real-time alerts and semantic search, creating the perception layer for the physical world. - **Entity Type**: Private (funding stage not publicly disclosed) - **Headquarters**: Not publicly available (likely US based on website language and job postings) - **Founded**: Not publicly available - **Founders**: Not publicly available ## Core Business - Primary industries: Physical security, critical infrastructure monitoring, industrial IoT, real-time situational awareness - Target customers: Enterprise and government – including energy companies, data centers, construction firms, ports, stadiums, industrial facilities, and campuses - Mission statement: "Creating a Software Defined Physical World" – providing instant awareness through real-time alerts, semantic search, and a map-based view of every event ## Products & Services - **Specter Platform**: A SaaS-based physical intelligence platform that ingests data from long-range wireless sensors (video, thermal, acoustic) and applies general AI (natural language alerts) to detect events such as unauthorized access, safety hazards, equipment anomalies, fires, spills, and perimeter breaches. Features include semantic search, live and historical event detection, and complete situational awareness dashboards. - **Long-Range Wireless Sensing Network**: Proprietary hardware and software for rugged, wide-area coverage without trenching – deployed across refineries, deserts, offshore platforms, construction sites, and other harsh environments. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed - **Key Metric**: Annual revenue not publicly available; company is actively hiring (Software Engineer – Systems listing) and has a live product across multiple industry verticals. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly available - **Growth Signals**: Recent website updates as of June 2026; expanding to new use cases (energy, data centers, construction, ports, stadiums); job openings indicate scaling engineering team. ## Competitive Advantages - **Long-range wireless sensing** that eliminates blind spots without trenching or on-site personnel – a differentiator for remote and harsh environments. - **General AI with natural language alerts** – users set and query alerts in plain English, lowering the barrier for security and operations teams. - **Multimodal sensing** (video, thermal, acoustic) combined with real-time analytics for high-fidelity event detection (e.g., PPE compliance, spills, equipment theft, person-down incidents). - Focus on **critical infrastructure** where downtime or security gaps carry high stakes, creating deep vertical-specific moats. ## Strategic Focus - Expanding horizontal deployment across energy, data centers, construction, logistics, and campus security. - Deepening AI capabilities through real-time semantic search and event detection to replace traditional CCTV monitoring. - Building a “software-defined physical world” that unifies disparate sensors into a single intelligent layer. ## Why Work Here - Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI + IoT systems that monitor real-world infrastructure at scale. - Engineering culture likely emphasizes distributed systems, computer vision, edge computing, and high-reliability software (based on job description for Software Engineer – Systems). - Fast-paced startup environment with a clear product-market fit across multiple verticals. - Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated; job posting does not specify location, but likely offers flexibility. ## Sources 1. [specter.co](https://specter.co/) 2. [specter.co/product](https://specter.co/product) 3. [specter.co/industries](https://specter.co/industries) 4. [specter.co/features](https://specter.co/features) 5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com - Software Engineer – Systems](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/specter/fe26a690-7934-46f4-bce2-8d8c5495a0dc) ## Other roles at Specter - [Optics & Camera Engineering Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/optics-camera-engineering-lead-specter-san-francisco-021ech8bvbse) — San Francisco, CA - [CV/ML Camera Test Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/cv-ml-camera-test-engineer-specter-san-francisco-xfz6n3t10vk8) — San Francisco, CA - [Manufacturing Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/manufacturing-engineer-specter-san-francisco-g75553wbxwx6) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Customer Operations Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-customer-operations-lead-specter-san-francisco-4e0jb5pg08bh) — San Francisco, CA - [Wireless Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/wireless-software-engineer-specter-san-francisco-zvjchm89fzv0) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer - Applied AI](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-applied-ai-specter-san-francisco-p7er9310dx06) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Antenna Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-antenna-engineer-specter-san-francisco-xea2760wvrkw) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer — Fleet](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-fleet-specter-san-francisco-5tm2vh5drfnf) — San Francisco, CA - [Platform Site Reliability Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/platform-site-reliability-engineer-specter-san-francisco-c9mhsvjd32qq) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Deployment Strategist](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-deployment-strategist-specter-san-francisco-81ba238x3y8m) — San Francisco, CA