Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Intern

Calix

1d • $24 - $35 • Remote

About The Position

Calix is looking for a Summer Intern to join our Products Team for the summer months. You will be part of a unique and award-winning program within the company which provides the opportunity to learn new skills through training and on the job learning. The duration of the program is expected to be 90 days. We are seeking a motivated and technically curious Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Intern to join our cloud operations and reliability team. This role offers hands on exposure to production systems, cloud infrastructure, databases, and event driven platforms, while learning how SRE principles are applied at scale. As part of a globally distributed SRE organization, the intern will also gain exposure to 24/7 operations through guided rotational shifts, supporting real world reliability and incident management scenarios.

Requirements

• Currently enrolled in a Bachelor's or Master's Degree program majoring in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Preference will be given to students who have completed their Junior or Senior years and who have previous internship or work experience.
• Strong fundamentals in Linux/Unix systems and command‑line usage.
• Basic understanding of networking concepts (TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing).
• Familiarity with Python, Shell scripting, or similar languages.
• Basic knowledge of databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB) including queries and schema concepts.
• Willingness to participate in 24/7 rotational shifts as part of a structured learning and support model.
• Good problem‑solving skills and eagerness to learn large‑scale systems.
• Able to work for the complete summer break (May - August or June - September).

Nice To Haves

• Exposure to cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure).
• Familiarity with Kafka or distributed messaging systems (topics, producers, consumers, offsets).
• Basic understanding of database reliability concepts such as backups, replication, failover, and performance tuning.
• Awareness of Kubernetes and containerized workloads.
• Experience with Git and basic CI/CD concepts (Jenkins or similar tools).
• Interest in SRE principles such as SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, and automation‑first thinking.

Responsibilities

• Assist in monitoring and maintaining reliability of cloud‑based services and platforms.
• Support day‑to‑day SRE operations including incident investigation, root cause analysis, and post‑incident documentation.
• Participate in 24/7 rotational shift coverage, under supervision, to support monitoring, alert triage, and operational readiness.
• Help build and enhance automation tools and scripts using Python and Shell.
• Contribute to observability initiatives using metrics, logs, and traces (Grafana, Prometheus, etc.).
• Assist in managing and troubleshooting databases (relational and/or NoSQL) with guidance from senior engineers.
• Support reliability and performance analysis for Kafka or event‑streaming systems, including basic troubleshooting and monitoring.
• Work with Infrastructure‑as‑Code (Terraform) to provision and validate environments.
• Assist with CI/CD pipelines and environment deployments.
• Create and maintain runbooks, dashboards, and operational documentation.
• Collaborate with software engineers and platform teams to improve system resilience and scalability.

Benefits

• The base pay range for this position varies based on the geographic location. More information about the pay range specific to candidate location and other factors will be shared during the recruitment process. Individual pay is determined based on location of residence and multiple factors, including job-related knowledge, skills and experience. San Francisco Bay Area: 27.60 - 34.50 USD Hourly All Other US Locations: 24.00 - 30.00 USD Hourly For information on our benefits click here.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Intern
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees