Staff Site Reliability Engineer at Axon

Join Axon and be a Force for Good. At Axon, we’re on a mission to Protect Life. We’re explorers, pursuing society’s most critical safety and justice issues with our ecosystem of devices and cloud software. Like our products, we work better together. We connect with candor and care, seeking out diverse perspectives from our customers, communities and each other. Life at Axon is fast-paced, challenging and meaningful. Here, you’ll take ownership and drive real change. Constantly grow as you work hard for a mission that matters at a company where you matter. Your Impact You are a Staff Site Reliability Engineer who will help define how Axon builds and operates its core platforms, with a primary focus on Zero Touch, our controlled, compliant execution framework, and the identity and security foundations that sit around it. Rather than manually provisioning infrastructure or running tickets, you design and build the platforms, tooling, and guardrails that enable hundreds of engineers to operate safely and efficiently at scale. You bring a strong background in infrastructure and platform engineering, deep experience with distributed systems, and a bias toward automation, self-service, and policy-by-default. You think in terms of APIs, workflows, and golden paths, not servers and scripts. You care as much about security, identity, and auditability as you do about latency and error budgets, and you are comfortable working in highly regulated environments where correctness, traceability, and least privilege are non‑negotiable. This role is highly cross‑functional. You will collaborate with staff and senior engineers across product and platform teams to shape how we build, deploy, secure, and operate Axon’s cloud systems in a modern, AI‑driven environment. Location - This role is based out of our Seattle office and follows a hybrid schedule. We rely on in-person collaboration and ask that team members work onsite Tuesdays through Fridays, with the flexibility to work remotely on Mondays, unless there is an approved workplace accommodation. We believe that connection fuels innovation, and our in-office culture is designed to foster meaningful teamwork, mentorship, and shared success. What You’ll Do • Drive the Zero Touch platform • Lead the design and implementation of Zero Touch, Axon’s controlled, compliant execution framework for operational and change workflows. • Define opinionated workflows, APIs, and abstractions that allow engineers to execute infrastructure and application changes safely, repeatably, and with strong guardrails. • Embed policy‑as‑code, approvals, and audit trails into the framework so that compliance requirements are enforced by default, not as an afterthought. • Drive identity and security posture improvements • Partner with Identity, Security, and Platform teams to design secure patterns for authentication, authorization, and workload identity across cloud platforms. • Define and standardize how services integrate with SSO/OIDC, RBAC, secrets management, certificate management, and key management so that platform workflows and APIs are identity‑aware and least‑privilege by design. • Improve Axon’s overall security posture by building primitives (e.g., policy engines, IAM baselines, secure-by-default templates) that can be reused across teams. • Join Forces on our dual‑cloud infrastructure modernization • Design and build dual‑cloud infrastructure abstractions (e.g., Terraform/CDK modules, platform services, deployment patterns) that allow Axon to run workloads consistently across providers while respecting regional and regulatory constraints. • Align these workflows with our dual‑cloud strategy so that multi‑region and multi‑cloud operations, failover, and rollout patterns are safe and repeatable. • Build platform abstractions that reduce operational burden • Design scalable, multi‑tenant platform services (e.g., deployment pipelines, runtime execution environments, policy engines, observability primitives) that turn recurring operational work into reusable capabilities. • Define clear golden paths and reference implementations for common patterns (e.g., service onboarding, change rollout, incident response automation) that raise the baseline for reliability, security, and developer experience. • Provide architectural and technical leadership • Drive architectural decisions for platform and infrastructure initiatives, balancing long‑term strategy with immediate business needs. • Collaborate with other staff and senior engineers to set technical direction for Axon’s reliability, security, and automation strategy, especially around our execution platform and identity. • Mentor and grow engineers across multiple teams, acting as a force multiplier by raising the technical bar and improving how we design, secure, and operate systems. What You Bring • 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on infrastructure, platform, or reliability engineering. • Strong programming skills in one or more languages such as Go, TypeScript, Python, or Java, with an emphasis on building services and tooling, not just scripts. • Experience operating and scaling public‑facing, distributed systems, including designing for availability, latency, and graceful degradation. • Deep familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform, CDK, CloudFormation) and modern CI/CD practices, including how to model policies, environments, and workflows as code. • Demonstrated experience building or owning platforms that other engineers depend on (e.g., deployment frameworks, execution engines, internal developer platforms, or SRE tooling). • Practical experience with identity and access management: • Integrating applications and platforms with SSO/OIDC providers and enforcing RBAC/ABAC. • Designing safe patterns for secrets management, key management, and workload identity. • Working with security and compliance partners to translate requirements into concrete, testable controls. • Experience improving security posture in cloud environments, including secure defaults, least‑privilege access patterns, and auditable change workflows. • Proven ability to lead through influence in highly collaborative, cross‑functional environments; you are comfortable driving consensus across product, platform, security, and compliance teams. • Strong system design and architecture skills, with a track record of making sound trade‑offs under ambiguity and scaling systems and platforms over multiple years. • Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and developing technical talent, helping others grow into stronger platform, SRE, or security engineers. • Excellent communication skills; you can explain complex systems, constraints, and trade‑offs clearly to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders. Benefits that Benefit You Our benefits offer an array of options to help support you physically, financially, and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life, including: • Competitive salary and 401(k) with employer match • Discretionary time off • Paid parental leave for all • Medical, Dental, Vision plans • Fitness Programs • Emotional & Development Programs • And yes, we have snacks in our offices Benefits listed herein may vary depending on the nature of your employment and the location where you work. Axon is a total compensation company, meaning compensation is made up of base pay, bonus, and stock awards. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: level, function, training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, geographic market, and often a combination of all these factors. Our benefits offer an array of options to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life. To see more details on our benefits offerings please visit [Upgrade to PRO to see link] Base Pay Range$180,000—$225,000 USDDon’t meet every single requirement? That's ok. At Axon, we Aim Far. We think big with a long-term view because we want to reinvent the world to be a safer, better place. We are also committed to building diverse teams that reflect the communities we serve. Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they check every box in the job description. If you’re excited about this role and our mission to Protect Life but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification listed here, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles. Important Notes The above job description is not intended as, nor should it be construed as, exhaustive of all duties, responsibilities, skills, efforts, or working conditions associated with this job. The job description may change or be supplemented at any time in accordance with business needs and conditions. Some roles may also require legal eligibility to work in a firearms environment. We collect personal information from applicants to evaluate candidates for employment. You may request access, deletion, or exercise other CCPA rights at [Upgrade to PRO to see contact] or via our Axon Privacy Web Form. For more information, please see the Your California Privacy Rights section of our Applicant and Candidate Privacy Notice. Axon’s mission is to Protect Life and is committed to the well-being and safety of its employees as well as Axon’s impact on the environment. All Axon employees must be aware of and committed to the appropriate environmental, health, and safety regulations, policies, and procedures. Axon employees are empowered to report safety concerns as they arise and activities potentially impacting the environment. We are an equal opportunity employer that promotes justice, advances equity, values diversity and fosters inclusion. We’re committed to hiring the best talent — regardless of race, creed, color, ancestry, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship status, marital status, disability, gender identity, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances — and empowering all of our employees so they can do their best work. If you have a disability or special need that requires assistance or accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please email [Upgrade to PRO to see contact]. Please note that this email address is for accommodation purposes only. Axon will not respond to inquiries for other purposes. Phishing alert: Axon will never ask you to pay for any part of the hiring process, including training, equipment, or background checks. We do not make job offers via text message, WhatsApp, or instant messaging platforms without a formal interview process. All legitimate job openings are listed on our official careers page at [Upgrade to PRO to see link] If you receive a suspicious offer or outreach from an email address that is not @axon.com, or if you are asked for sensitive personal information (bank details, Social Security Number) prematurely, please ignore the message and report it to [Upgrade to PRO to see contact].