Senior DevOps Engineer I

Rocket Lab Corporation•Long Beach, CA

2d•$124,000 - $171,000•Onsite

About The Position

Rocket Lab is hiring a Senior DevOps Engineer I for its Space Systems team, based at the company’s global headquarters in Long Beach, California. The role is part of the DevSecOps organization and is responsible for building, operating, and improving an observability platform that provides insight into the health and performance of mission-critical systems. The position focuses on dependable, scalable telemetry collection, storage, visualization, and alerting across cloud and Kubernetes environments. The engineer will work with Space Systems teams to improve monitoring coverage, alert quality, dashboards, and operational response. The role also includes designing AI agents to detect, analyze, and troubleshoot software testing failures, and building AI-enabled quality automation that monitors CI/CD pipelines across programs and platforms. The work contributes to the reliability, performance, and security of software supporting space missions. The position may involve prolonged sitting, standing, walking, and computer work, as well as occasional exposure to moderate noise, dust, and fumes in production areas. Compensation includes base pay and equity; the anticipated total compensation range is $176,000–$207,000 USD, with a base salary range of $124,000–$171,000 USD. Actual level and base salary may vary based on job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience. Equity value depends on vesting and stock-price performance.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or another technical discipline.
At least 5 years of experience in DevOps, site reliability engineering, platform engineering, or a related infrastructure discipline.
Hands-on experience operating and improving production observability and monitoring platforms.
Demonstrated expertise in AI/ML technologies and hands-on experience building AI-driven automation systems.
Experience with AWS and GCP cloud services.
Experience managing infrastructure as code with Terraform and collaborating through Git-based workflows.
U.S. citizenship is required due to program requirements.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Splunk.
Experience administering and configuring data visualization and analytics platforms such as Grafana.
Administration experience with time-series databases such as Grafana Mimir.
Strong problem-solving skills, an automation-first mindset, and a track record of improving reliability in production environments.
Experience deploying and managing Prometheus-based monitoring with kube-prometheus-stack.
Experience configuring and operating Grafana Alloy for telemetry collection and forwarding.
Strong understanding of CI/CD pipeline automation tools, DevSecOps practices, and Kubernetes operations.
Experience with cloud networking concepts and troubleshooting.
Experience building dashboards with Grafana, Kibana, or custom visualization frameworks.
Knowledge of security testing tools and DevSecOps security practices.
Aerospace background supporting satellite, spacecraft, constellation, or launch vehicle ground or mission operations.
Expertise in Git-based workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and Kubernetes orchestration.
Experience with observability and monitoring tools.
Experience with Kubecost.
Experience operating and building solutions within a GovCloud environment.

Responsibilities

Build, operate, and continuously improve the observability stack, including Grafana, Grafana Mimir, kube-prometheus-stack, and Grafana Alloy.
Design and maintain scalable metrics collection, ingestion, retention, and query patterns for Kubernetes and cloud workloads.
Develop and maintain Grafana dashboards that provide actionable insights to engineering teams and leadership.
Design, tune, and maintain alerting and notification workflows to reduce noise and support timely incident response.
Partner with engineering teams to define service-level indicators, service-level objectives, and monitoring standards.
Identify telemetry gaps, analyze trends, and implement lasting instrumentation and monitoring improvements.
Integrate AWS CloudWatch and CloudTrail telemetry into the observability platform for operational visibility, security monitoring, and troubleshooting.
Manage observability infrastructure through version-controlled, automated deployments using Terraform, Git, and CI/CD pipelines.
Analyze platform reliability, telemetry quality, dashboard adoption, and alert effectiveness to drive continuous improvement.
Troubleshoot monitoring, telemetry, and alerting issues across AWS and GCP environments.
Work with development teams through code reviews and integrated pipelines to build observability into systems from the outset.
Design and implement AI agents to detect, analyze, and troubleshoot software testing failures with minimal human intervention.
Build and maintain AI-powered quality automation ecosystems that monitor CI/CD pipelines across multiple programs and platforms.

Benefits

Company stock as part of total compensation.
Employee Stock Purchase Program with a 15% discount on company stock.
Medical plans, including HMO, PPO, and a zero-cost HDHP option with a significant company HSA contribution.
Dental coverage.
Vision coverage.
Paid vacation and sick time.
11 paid holidays.
Flexible spending and dependent care accounts.
Paid parental leave.
Disability insurance.
Life insurance.
401(k) retirement plan with company match.
Subsidized EV charging.
Onsite fitness centers where available.
Discounted gym memberships.
Complimentary snacks and beverages.
50% employee discount on the company merchandise store.
Other employee discounts.