Production Engineer – Team Lead

About the Role:

As the Cloud Platform; Production Engineer – Team Lead, you will be at the heart of CoreWeave’s cloud infrastructure stability and reliability. This senior generalist role is designed to provide strategic direction, operational continuity, and technical expertise across various facets of our platform. You will act as a bridge between engineering reliability and broader technical and organizational goals, ensuring a seamless connection between incident response, platform reliability, and team development. You will be responsible for guiding the team’s response to critical incidents, tracking performance against Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and driving improvements that enhance both operational readiness and reliability across the organization.

Your leadership will go beyond the immediate tactical resolution of incidents, ensuring that we continuously evolve our processes, communication, and training to support ongoing operational excellence. The Cloud Platform; Production Engineer Team Lead will reduce ambiguity, provide clarity, and keep reliability at the forefront of decision-making.

Key Responsibilities:

Incident Management & Recovery:

• Act as the Incident Commander during incidents, providing decisive leadership to ensure timely and effective resolution while minimizing impact.
• Coordinate cross-functional teams, including engineering, operations, and customer-facing units, during incidents, ensuring clear communication at all stages.
• Lead root cause analysis (RCA) efforts, working with engineering teams to implement long-term, sustainable solutions and prevent recurrence.
• Own and refine the post-incident review (PIR) process, ensuring actionable outcomes and continuous learning across the team.
• Oversee the creation and maintenance of incident response playbooks to ensure team readiness for diverse failure scenarios.
• Drive the escalation process, acting as the primary point of contact for high-priority incidents.

Operational Excellence & Reliability:

• Define and track Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and ensure alignment with business goals and team objectives.
• Champion the use of SLOs to guide incident prioritization, drive improvements, and communicate reliability outcomes.
• Identify and lead initiatives to improve system resilience, scalability, and disaster recovery capabilities across the platform.
• Develop and optimize KPIs, SLAs, and performance metrics for incident management and operational efficiency.
• Spearhead the implementation of automation strategies to reduce Mean Time to Detection (MTTD) and Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR), while increasing overall platform reliability.
• Mentor and guide the Production Engineering Team, ensuring consistent growth in technical skills, incident response expertise, and leadership capabilities.

Drive rapid incident resolution, able to drive collective technical deep-dives into unknown systems - connecting SMEs to find the unknown unknowns in their systems and how those systems fit into the broader ecosystem.

Team Development & Mentorship:

• Lead the development of the team by training and mentoring Production Engineer I/II in incident management best practices, tools, and systems.
• Foster a collaborative environment where knowledge sharing, continuous learning, and feedback are prioritized.
• Support the creation and evolution of team processes, ensuring scalability and the ability to respond effectively to both current and future needs.
• Encourage professional growth and up-leveling within the team, creating a strong foundation for the next generation of Cloud Platform SREs.

Wondering if you’re a good fit? We believe in investing in our people, and value candidates who can bring their own diversified experiences to our teams – even if you aren't a 100% skill or experience match. Here are a few qualities we’ve found compatible with our team. If some of this describes you, we’d love to talk. 

Minimun Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in production engineering, cloud operations, site reliability engineering (SRE), or incident response roles.
• Deep knowledge of cloud platforms (e.g., Kubernetes-based infrastructure, AWS, GCP).
• Strong familiarity with incident management frameworks such as ITIL and SRE best practices.
• Proficiency with monitoring and alerting tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana) and strong understanding of observability principles.
• Hands-on experience with automation, scripting, and configuration management tools (e.g., Python, Bash, Terraform).
• Demonstrated ability to make critical decisions under pressure, guiding teams through high-stakes incident resolution.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical issues for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Proven experience mentoring and coaching technical teams, driving a culture of growth and continuous improvement.
• Applicants must have work authorization that does not require sponsorship from the company now or in the future.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Previous experience in an Incident Commander role, managing high-priority incidents and major service restorations.
• Advanced knowledge of Kubernetes, containerization, and distributed systems.
• Familiarity with change management processes, post-incident analysis techniques, and runbook automation.
• Experience with developing and managing self-healing infrastructure.

The base salary range for this role is $165,000 to $220,000. The starting salary will be determined based on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and market location. We strive for both market alignment and internal equity when determining compensation. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package includes a discretionary bonus, equity awards, and a comprehensive benefits program (all based on eligibility).