📍 Job Overview

• Job Title: Lead Architect – SRE & Observability
• Company: Applied Materials
• Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
• Job Type: On-site, Full-time
• Category: DevOps Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer
• Date Posted: 2025-07-28
• Experience Level: 10-15 years
• Remote Status: On-site

🚀 Role Summary

• Lead cross-functional initiatives to design, scale, and govern monitoring and observability platforms across hybrid cloud and datacenter infrastructures.
• Ensure the reliability of infrastructure and application services by driving automation, telemetry, and incident response maturity.
• Collaborate with application and infrastructure teams to establish technical standards and enforce resiliency, observability, and reliability as core design principles.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role requires a strong background in both Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and Observability, making it an excellent fit for experienced professionals looking to lead strategic initiatives in a large enterprise environment.

💻 Primary Responsibilities

• Observability & Monitoring:

  • Architect and lead end-to-end observability strategies (logs, metrics, traces) across hybrid environments.
  • Manage and mature enterprise observability solutions, ensuring proactive problem detection and capacity forecasting.
  • Define standards for telemetry data collection, correlation, and alerting for distributed systems.
  • Collaborate with teams to ensure instrumentation coverage and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) definition.

• Site Reliability Engineering:

  • Define and implement SRE principles (SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, chaos testing, postmortems) across supported services.
  • Design and manage infrastructure automation, CI/CD pipelines, AI/ML solutions, runbooks, and self-healing systems.
  • Lead incident response coordination during major outages and drive post-incident analysis and systemic fixes.
  • Collaborate with DevOps, Cloud, and Security teams to enforce resiliency, observability, and reliability as core design principles.

• Leadership & Mentoring:

  • Mentor junior SREs and CAMO engineers to grow technical and operational expertise.
  • Lead cross-functional teams to drive automation, telemetry, and incident response maturity across the enterprise.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role involves a significant leadership component, requiring strong communication, negotiation, and stakeholder engagement skills to drive strategic initiatives and influence teams across the organization.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field.

Experience: 10-15 years in IT Operations, SRE, DevOps, or Monitoring Engineering roles.

Required Skills:

• Expertise in designing and implementing observability frameworks (logs, metrics, traces) across hybrid environments.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices architecture, and telemetry pipelines.
• Proficiency in infrastructure automation and configuration management using tools like Terraform, Ansible, and scripting languages (Python, Shell, etc.).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, incident response automation, and self-healing systems.
• Familiarity with container orchestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes) and virtualization technologies.
• Experience with AIOPS, ITSM, CAASM tools, and configuration management databases.
• Exposure to compliance and governance frameworks such as CIS, NIST for cyber resilience, observability, and alerting.

Preferred Skills:

• Relevant certifications in observability, cloud platforms, SRE, or security domains.
• Experience with hybrid environments, including virtualization, container orchestration, and cloud platforms.
• Proven track record in automation, telemetry governance, and infrastructure as code.

Interpersonal Skills:

• Communicates difficult concepts and negotiates with others to adopt a different point of view.

📝 Enhancement Note: While not explicitly stated, this role likely requires a strong understanding of cybersecurity principles and a background in managing and securing large-scale IT environments.

📊 Web Portfolio & Project Requirements

• Portfolio Essentials:

  • Demonstrate expertise in modern observability platforms and telemetry pipelines with relevant projects and case studies.
  • Showcase experience in infrastructure automation, CI/CD pipelines, and incident response with live examples or demos.
  • Highlight leadership and mentoring skills with examples of driving technical initiatives and growing junior team members.

• Technical Documentation:

  • Provide documentation for observability and monitoring projects, including data collection, correlation, and alerting strategies.
  • Include runbooks, incident response plans, and postmortem analyses for infrastructure and application services.
  • Showcase experience with configuration management databases and compliance frameworks with relevant documentation.

📝 Enhancement Note: Given the leadership nature of this role, applicants should be prepared to discuss their approach to driving strategic initiatives, managing teams, and influencing stakeholders in a large enterprise environment.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: INR 2,500,000 - 3,500,000 per annum (Estimated, based on industry standards for experienced DevOps/SRE professionals in Bengaluru)

Benefits:

• Health and wellness programs
• Professional growth opportunities
• Supportive work culture
• Competitive compensation and benefits package

Working Hours: Full-time, with on-site presence required (10% travel)

🎯 Team & Company Context

Company Culture:

• Industry: Semiconductor manufacturing and materials engineering
• Company Size: Large (20,000+ employees)
• Founded: 1967
• Team Structure: Large, cross-functional teams with a focus on collaboration and innovation
• Development Methodology: Agile/Scrum, with a focus on continuous integration, delivery, and improvement

Career & Growth Analysis:

• Web Technology Career Level: Senior/Leadership level, with a focus on driving strategic initiatives and influencing teams across the organization.
• Reporting Structure: This role reports directly to the Director of GIS CAMO & SRE and may have supervisory responsibilities for junior SREs and CAMO engineers.
• Technical Impact: Significant impact on the reliability, performance, and security of critical infrastructure and application services across the enterprise.

Growth Opportunities:

• Growth opportunities exist within the GIS CAMO & SRE team and across the broader organization, with potential paths to technical leadership, architecture, or management roles.

📝 Enhancement Note: Given the large size and global presence of Applied Materials, this role offers significant opportunities for career growth and development within the organization.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: Large, modern office with a collaborative work environment, including dedicated spaces for team meetings and brainstorming sessions.

Office Location(s): Bengaluru, with potential for occasional travel to other domestic or international offices (10% of the time).

Workspace Context:

• Collaboration: Collaborative workspaces with easy access to team members and stakeholders for regular communication and coordination.
• Tools & Equipment: Modern workstations with multiple monitors, testing devices, and development tools tailored to the role's requirements.
• Work-Life Balance: Flexible work arrangements, with a focus on work-life balance and employee well-being.

Work Schedule: Full-time, with standard working hours and flexible deployment windows, maintenance, and project deadlines.

📝 Enhancement Note: While the role is on-site, the company offers a flexible work arrangement, allowing for a balance between on-site collaboration and remote work as needed.

📄 Application & Technical Interview Process

Interview Process:

1. Technical Phone Screen: Assess knowledge of observability frameworks, distributed systems, and infrastructure automation with targeted questions and coding challenges.
2. On-site Technical Deep Dive: Evaluate understanding of SRE principles, incident response, and leadership skills with a mix of technical and behavioral questions, case studies, and live demos.
3. Final Round: Assess cultural fit, strategic thinking, and problem-solving skills with a focus on driving enterprise-wide initiatives and influencing stakeholders.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Highlight expertise in modern observability platforms and telemetry pipelines with relevant projects and case studies.
• Showcase experience in infrastructure automation, CI/CD pipelines, and incident response with live examples or demos.
• Demonstrate leadership and mentoring skills with examples of driving technical initiatives and growing junior team members.

Technical Challenge Preparation:

• Brush up on knowledge of observability frameworks, distributed systems, and infrastructure automation.
• Prepare for questions on SRE principles, incident response, and leadership skills.
• Practice explaining complex technical concepts in a clear and concise manner.

ATS Keywords: (Relevant keywords for resume optimization, organized by category)

• Observability: Log aggregation, metric collection, trace analysis, centralized logging, distributed tracing, monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, etc.)
• Infrastructure Automation: Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, Chef, scripting languages (Python, Shell, etc.), CI/CD pipelines, Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI
• Incident Response: Chaos testing, postmortem analysis, blameless postmortems, incident response planning, on-call rotations, incident command systems
• Leadership & Mentoring: Strategic planning, stakeholder communication, team building, knowledge sharing, technical mentoring, career development
• Cloud Platforms: Hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, on-premises, private cloud, public cloud, cloud migration, cloud governance
• DevOps & SRE: Infrastructure as code, continuous integration, continuous delivery, continuous improvement, site reliability engineering, DevOps culture, DevOps tools (Jenkins, GitLab, etc.)

📝 Enhancement Note: Applicants should tailor their resumes and portfolios to highlight relevant skills and experiences for this specific role, focusing on observability, infrastructure automation, incident response, and leadership.

🛠 Technology Stack & Web Infrastructure

Observability & Monitoring Tools:

• Logs & Metrics: ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, New Relic, Splunk
• Traces: Jaeger, Zipkin, OpenTelemetry, Honeycomb, Lightstep
• Centralized Logging & Monitoring: ELK Stack, Datadog, New Relic, Splunk

Infrastructure Automation & Configuration Management:

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, Chef, CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Google Cloud Deployment Manager (GCDM)
• Scripting Languages: Python, Shell, Bash, PowerShell, Groovy, Ruby
• CI/CD Pipelines: Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI, Bamboo, GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, Google Cloud Build

Container Orchestration & Virtualization:

• Container Orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Amazon ECS, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• Virtualization: VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, VirtualBox, Proxmox, Xen

Cloud Platforms & Infrastructure:

• Hybrid Cloud: VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, OpenStack, VMware vRealize, Microsoft Azure Stack, Nutanix
• Multi-Cloud: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud
• On-premises & Private Cloud: VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, OpenStack, VMware vRealize, Microsoft Azure Stack, Nutanix

Incident Response & IT Service Management (ITSM):

• Incident Response Planning: PagerDuty, Opsgenie, VictorOps, On-Call, Datadog Incident Response, New Relic Incident Intelligence
• ITSM Tools: ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, Jira Service Management, Zendesk, Freshservice

📝 Enhancement Note: Applicants should be familiar with the tools and technologies listed above, as they are commonly used in enterprise environments for observability, monitoring, and incident response.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Web Development Values:

• Observability & Monitoring: Prioritize end-to-end observability, proactive problem detection, and capacity forecasting to ensure high-quality services and user experiences.
• Site Reliability Engineering: Focus on reliability, availability, and automation to minimize downtime and maximize system performance.
• Leadership & Collaboration: Foster a culture of knowledge sharing, mentoring, and continuous learning to drive technical excellence and innovation.
• Customer-centricity: Prioritize user experiences and business outcomes in all technical decision-making processes.

Collaboration Style:

• Cross-functional Integration: Collaborate closely with application and infrastructure teams to ensure instrumentation coverage, SLO/SLI definition, and strategic alignment.
• Code Review & Peer Programming: Encourage code review and peer programming practices to maintain high-quality standards and drive continuous learning.
• Knowledge Sharing: Foster a culture of knowledge sharing, mentoring, and technical skill development to drive personal and team growth.

📝 Enhancement Note: Applicants should be prepared to discuss their approach to driving strategic initiatives, managing teams, and influencing stakeholders in a large enterprise environment with a strong focus on collaboration and innovation.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Technical Challenges:

• Observability & Monitoring: Design and implement end-to-end observability strategies for complex, hybrid environments with diverse application and infrastructure components.
• Site Reliability Engineering: Define and enforce SRE principles across supported services, driving automation, telemetry, and incident response maturity at scale.
• Leadership & Mentoring: Mentor junior SREs and CAMO engineers to grow technical and operational expertise, driving career development and team success.
• Incident Response: Lead incident response coordination during major outages, driving post-incident analysis and systemic fixes to minimize downtime and improve system resilience.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Technical Skill Development: Stay up-to-date with emerging observability, monitoring, and incident response technologies and best practices.
• Conference Attendance & Certification: Attend industry conferences, webinars, and workshops to expand knowledge and network with peers.
• Technical Mentorship & Leadership: Seek mentorship opportunities from experienced professionals and develop leadership skills through coaching, training, and hands-on experience.

📝 Enhancement Note: Applicants should be prepared to discuss their approach to driving strategic initiatives, managing teams, and influencing stakeholders in a large enterprise environment with a strong focus on collaboration and innovation.

💡 Interview Preparation

Technical Questions:

• Observability & Monitoring: Describe your approach to designing and implementing end-to-end observability strategies for complex, hybrid environments.
• Site Reliability Engineering: Explain how you would define and enforce SRE principles across supported services, driving automation, telemetry, and incident response maturity at scale.
• Leadership & Mentoring: Discuss your approach to mentoring junior SREs and CAMO engineers, driving career development and team success.
• Incident Response: Describe your experience with incident response planning, coordination, and postmortem analysis, and how you would lead incident response efforts in a large enterprise environment.

Company & Culture Questions:

• Technical Architecture: Explain how you would align technical architecture with business objectives and user experiences, ensuring high-quality services and user experiences.
• Strategic Planning: Describe your approach to strategic planning and execution, driving enterprise-wide initiatives and influencing stakeholders.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Discuss your experience working with cross-functional teams, including application and infrastructure teams, and how you would ensure strategic alignment and effective collaboration.

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Observability & Monitoring: Highlight expertise in modern observability platforms and telemetry pipelines with relevant projects and case studies.
• Site Reliability Engineering: Showcase experience in infrastructure automation, CI/CD pipelines, and incident response with live examples or demos.
• Leadership & Mentoring: Demonstrate leadership and mentoring skills with examples of driving technical initiatives and growing junior team members.

📝 Enhancement Note: Applicants should be prepared to discuss their approach to driving strategic initiatives, managing teams, and influencing stakeholders in a large enterprise environment with a strong focus on collaboration and innovation.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Lead Architect – SRE & Observability position at Applied Materials:

1. Resume Optimization: Tailor your resume to highlight relevant skills and experiences for this specific role, focusing on observability, infrastructure automation, incident response, and leadership.
2. Portfolio Customization: Curate your portfolio to showcase expertise in modern observability platforms, infrastructure automation, and incident response with live examples or demos.
3. Application Submission: Submit your application through the provided link, including a tailored cover letter that demonstrates your understanding of the role and enthusiasm for the opportunity.
4. Interview Preparation: Brush up on knowledge of observability frameworks, distributed systems, and infrastructure automation. Prepare for questions on SRE principles, incident response, and leadership skills, and practice explaining complex technical concepts in a clear and concise manner.
5. Company Research: Thoroughly research Applied Materials, the GIS CAMO & SRE team, and the role's requirements to ensure a strong understanding of the company culture, technical environment, and career growth opportunities.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and web development/server administration industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.

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