Lead DevOps SRE (Remote Eligible)

Southwest Power Pool (SPP) is about more than power. We’re about the power of relationships. Our employees have the opportunity to work together to ensure electricity is delivered reliably and affordably to the millions of people living in our service territory. We have been voted one of Arkansas’ Best Places to work by Arkansas Business and we are looking for a member of our team who is passionate about our mission to keep the lights on!

We have a core ideology here at SPP that we stand by: Do the right thing, for the right reason, in the right way.

We believe in supporting our employees through a fantastic benefits package:

• Competitive and transparent pay with bonus opportunities
• Excellent insurance package including three great medical plans to choose from, employer-paid short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance
• Relocation bonus (if applicable)
• Hybrid working environment for positions that are eligible
• Fantastic contributions to your retirement through a 401(k) savings plan with employer-match benefits and a pension (defined benefit plan) fully funded by SPP

COMPENSATION INFORMATION
The salary range(s) represents our good faith estimate for the role at this time. While we strive to provide competitive and transparent compensation, there may be circumstances where an offer is above or outside of the listed range. We are open to discussing salary expectations with qualified candidates considering factors such as the candidate's qualifications, skills, competencies, experience and geographic location will all be considered during the hiring process.

Lead DevOps SRE | Pay Range: $109,500.00 - $142,250.00

Join a mission-driven technology team powering the reliability of the electric grid for millions across the central United States. At Southwest Power Pool, we keep the lights on—literally. As a Lead DevOps SRE, you’ll play a pivotal role in ensuring the performance, resilience, and long-term scalability of SPP’s production systems and user-facing services.

If you're passionate about high-availability architecture, automation at scale, and shaping the future of reliability engineering, this is your opportunity to make a meaningful impact.

What You'll Do:

As the Lead SRE, you will be the technical authority driving SPP’s reliability and operational strategy. In this role, you will:

• Design and lead implementation of large-scale, highly available infrastructure solutions across multiple platforms.

• Serve as the primary technical escalation point for complex incidents, outages, and performance issues—ensuring rapid, effective resolution.

• Establish SRE best practices and operational frameworks that raise reliability standards across the entire organization.

• Mentor and develop senior and junior SRE team members through coaching, code reviews, and knowledge-sharing.

• Partner with leadership, architects, and technical teams to align reliability initiatives with long-term architectural strategy.

• Drive continuous improvement, automation, and reduction of operational toil across environments.

• Lead major enterprise projects involving new technologies, cross-team automation, and reliability enhancements.

• Make architectural decisions that influence scalability, resiliency, and infrastructure management standards.

You'll also contribute hands-on technical expertise through testing, coding, scripting, designing integrated systems, reviewing new and existing projects for architectural compliance, and researching emerging technologies to keep SPP’s ecosystem future-ready.

Key Responsibilities:

• Developing and executing test plans to evaluate system performance.

• Planning and scheduling deployment activities and resolving release pipeline issues.

• Maintaining deep knowledge of SPP's architecture and technology portfolio.

• Creating and communicating technology standards and policies.

• Designing and overseeing implementation of integrated systems and databases.

• Ensuring system and software integrations meet functional and compliance requirements.

• Conducting application testing (unit, system, regression, performance, acceptance).

• Writing and translating code to enhance application performance.

• Providing architectural consulting across engineering and development teams.

• Serving as the organizational subject matter expert in SRE.

Ready to lead the future of reliability engineering at SPP? Apply today and help us continue delivering safe, reliable power across the region.

To be successful as a Lead DevOps SRE, we're looking for:

Education Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, related field, or equivalent work experience

Experience Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience building highly available systems and supporting SaaS cloud-based infrastructure
• Experience with terraform, Docker, Kubernetes or other Infrastructure/Configuration-as-code tooling
• Experience using at least one scripting language such as Python, bash, PowerShell or similar
• Experience deploying to cloud-based technology (AWS)
• Experience with continuous integration (CI/CD) and automated build tools.
• Ability to tackle problems both at large scale and the small scale
• Good understanding of application/infrastructure security
• Excellent communication skills; ability to communicate with distributed teams

Preferred:

• Familiar with DevOps environments / Containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Good knowledge of algorithms, data structures, complexity analysis and software design
• Experience with integration tools: Bitbucket, GIT, Bamboo, Jenkins, Code Pipeline, DroneCI, Docker etc.
• Expert knowledge of Unix/Linux systems is often essential, including basic command-line proficiency, system administration tasks, and troubleshooting skills.

Work Environment:

This job operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment.

Physical Demands:

The physical and mental demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to perform the essential functions of this job successfully.

• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to make decisions, interpret data, and problem solve.
• The employee frequently is required to stand or sit for extended periods; use hands to operate a computer keyboard and standard office equipment.
• The employee must occasionally lift and move up to 10 pounds.
• Requires the ability to work and collaborate with managers and employees at all levels to exchange ideas, information, and opinions to facilitate the task.
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, and ability to adjust focus.
• Understanding of compliance with and enforcement of SPP Policies and Procedures

Position Type, Location, and Expected Hours of Work:

This is a full-time, hybrid onsite position based in Little Rock, Arkansas. The standard schedule is Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with occasional extended hours as needed. Fully remote work is available only for senior-level positions and above, and only for candidates residing outside a 50-mile radius of Little Rock (Central Arkansas).

Travel Requirement:

This position requires minimal travel (approximately 0-15%).

SPP is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer of individuals with disabilities and protected veterans and is committed to excellence. If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us at HR@spp.org and let us know the nature of your request. We will only respond to messages left that involve a request for a reasonable accommodation in the application process. We will accommodate the needs of any qualified candidate who requests a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

At SPP we believe in a culture of belonging. Learn more here: Culture of Belonging - Southwest Power Pool.

Full job descriptions will be made available to those selected for an interview.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities
This employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws. For further information, please review the Know Your Rights notice from the Department of Labor.