Principal Site Reliability Engineer

Department Overview: 
The Engineering department is the backbone of Copper; entrusted with the critical responsibility of building and securing the infrastructure that safeguards billions of dollars in digital assets. We operate at the intersection of traditional institutional finance and decentralized blockchain technology.

Team Purpose: 
We believe the best infrastructure comes from curious minds working openly together. Our engineering organisation brings together people with diverse backgrounds and experiences who genuinely enjoy solving hard problems. We foster a blame-free, intellectually honest environment where you're encouraged to take thoughtful risks and think big. You'll have the autonomy to own meaningful projects while gaining the support you need to grow your skills and advance your career.

Role Purpose: 

We're looking for a site reliability engineer at the intersection of software development and systems engineering. In this role, your focus will be delivering the reliability, performance, and uptime our clients depend on, whilst continuously improving how our systems operate.

Day-to-day, you'll tackle complex infrastructure challenges through a combination of thoughtful engineering and considered automation. Rather than fighting fires, you'll work to prevent them. You'll analyse system capacity and performance, identify bottlenecks, and build solutions that scale across our department, not just one team.

You will collaborate closely with the DevOps team, but focusing primarily on reliability engineering, operational excellence, and production readiness across the broader engineering org.

Key Responsibilities:  

Shape SRE; Define how we think about reliability, observability, and operational excellence. Drive the adoption of SRE principles across the organization while building the systems and processes that make those principles measurable – think SLIs, SLOs and error budgets.

Scale Through Automation; Champion architectural improvements that enhance both system reliability and deployment velocity. Provide consultation on system architecture, building reusable platforms and frameworks, planning capacity needs, and conducting production readiness reviews to ensure services launch and operate successfully.

Drive Technical Excellence; Engage in and improve the lifecycle of microservices, from inception through deployment, operation, observability, and continuous refinement.

Lead Through Influence; Partner with engineering and product leadership to embed reliability into our product development lifecycle. Conduct blameless postmortems and drive systemic improvements in incident management. Mentor engineers across the organisation on SRE practices, helping teams take ownership of their service reliability.

While this role begins as an IC position, it will play a key part in shaping the future of SRE at Copper

Skills and Experience: 

Essential  

• Experience in designing, analysing, and troubleshooting distributed systems or micro-services architectures.
• Established expertise in observability and incident management.
• Proven experience in driving organizational Change
• Excellent communication skills, with a systematic problem-solving approach.

Desirable  

• Experience working with production workloads in AWS
• Experience working in financial services or similarly regulated environments
• Interest in blockchain based technologies and/or ‘decentralised’ finance
• Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering.

Why Copper?  

At Copper, we keep innovation, openness, and curiosity at the centre of everything we do. Here, bold ideas get the spotlight, learning is constant, and diversity shapes our team from the ground up.

Jump into a fast-moving, dynamic team that loves a challenge and knows how to have fun along the way. Collaboration is just as important as results—you’ll be surrounded by smart, driven colleagues in London and across our APAC, Switzerland, UAE, and US offices.

Hybrid working model – we believe in the value of bringing people together and at the same time we embrace the adaptability of flexibly working.

Diversity and inclusion matter to us – they’re woven into Copper life. From employee-led groups like Women at Copper to a committee focused on community and wellbeing, you’ll have a network that supports you from day one. Everyone voice matters.

If you’re looking to ramp up your career, or keen to do something new in your field, with us, you’ll keep moving forward.

Ready to make your mark, keep growing, and join a supportive, dynamic team? Copper’s the place.

The interview process at Copper  

Our interview process is designed to be thoughtful, efficient, and engaging. While specific steps may vary slightly depending on the role, the typical journey includes:

1. Initial Screening A brief conversation with our Talent Acquisition team to explore your background, motivations, and alignment with the role.
2. Technical Interview A virtual session conducted via Microsoft Teams, where you'll engage with team members to discuss relevant skills, problem-solving approaches, and technical experience.
3. In-Person Interview A conversation focused on team dynamics, collaboration style, and any final technical questions. This may be with cross-functional peers or leadership.
4. Cultural Interview A Conversation that explores our motivations, values and Communication style, helping us understand how you collaborate and align with our team culture 

Additional steps may be added based on the role's complexity or seniority. We aim to keep the process transparent and respectful of your time.

Benefits 

In return for everything you can bring to Copper, we can offer you an exciting, challenging role in a fast-growing and dynamic business, with career opportunities and welcoming working environment. Some of our key UK benefits are highlighted below: 

• Paid Time Off - A minimum of 35 days of paid time off per year, inclusive of annual leave and public holidays. Employees also receive one additional day of annual leave for each year of service.
• Comprehensive Medical Insurance - Inclusive of dental, optical, audiology, and mental health coverage, with medical history disregarded
• Life Insurance
• Enhanced Pension Contributions - Includes an enhanced employer matching contribution
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

If you think you have everything we're looking for and more, then we'd love you to apply for the opportunity.