At American Express, we are transforming how software is built, deployed, and operated at enterprise scale. The Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) organization is at the center of this transformation, building the engineering capabilities that enable secure software delivery, resilient platforms, intelligent operations, and exceptional developer experiences.
As a Staff Engineer, you will be a senior technical leader responsible for advancing the reliability, scalability, and operational excellence of critical technology platforms. You will work across engineering organizations to solve complex production challenges through software engineering, platform innovation, automation, and AI-powered operational capabilities.
This is a highly influential individual contributor role where success is measured by the systems you build, the engineering practices you shape, and the enterprise impact you create.
Role Summary
As a Staff Engineer within the Site Reliability Engineering organization, you will lead the evolution of enterprise reliability engineering by building scalable platform capabilities that improve system resilience, engineering productivity, and operational efficiency.
You will partner closely with Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, Security Engineering, Application Development, and Enterprise Architecture teams to modernize how software is delivered, observed, secured, and operated across the enterprise.
This role requires deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, software engineering, DevSecOps, observability, automation, and AI-enabled operations. You will drive engineering solutions that reduce operational complexity, improve service reliability, eliminate manual toil, and accelerate the organization's journey toward autonomous operations.
Drive the technical direction for reliability engineering across critical enterprise platforms.
You will:
Apply software engineering to eliminate operational complexity and improve engineering productivity.
You will:
Leverage modern programming languages and cloud-native technologies to solve complex operational problems at scale.
Enable secure, reliable, and efficient software delivery across the enterprise.
You will:
Partner with application teams to simplify software delivery while improving production stability.
Lead the evolution of modern operations through AI-driven engineering and intelligent automation.
You will:
Advance the organization's journey toward autonomous operations while maintaining governance and operational safety.
Partner with Security Engineering to improve the resilience of production systems through secure engineering practices.
Integrate automated vulnerability detection and remediation into software delivery and operational workflows.
Build scalable engineering solutions that reduce vulnerability remediation time and improve enterprise security posture.
Advance secure-by-default engineering practices across infrastructure and application platforms.
Improve software supply chain security through automated controls and continuous compliance.
Reduce operational risk through engineering automation and policy-driven governance.
Reduce operational toil through intelligent automation and reusable engineering solutions.
Identify repetitive operational activities and replace them with scalable automation.
Build reusable automation frameworks supporting infrastructure, application operations, compliance, and engineering workflows.
Standardize operational runbooks through workflow orchestration and policy-driven automation.
Improve engineering efficiency by enabling self-service operational capabilities.
Measure automation effectiveness through reductions in manual effort, operational risk, and incident resolution time.
As a Staff Engineer, your influence extends beyond any single team.
Lead enterprise-wide engineering initiatives spanning multiple organizations.
Influence architectural decisions through technical expertise and engineering excellence.
Mentor senior engineers and technical leaders across the organization.
Prototype emerging technologies and evaluate their applicability to enterprise engineering challenges.
Drive technical alignment through collaboration, technical design reviews, and engineering standards.
Foster a culture of continuous improvement, operational excellence, and engineering innovation.
Success in this role will be measured through tangible engineering outcomes, including:
Improved service availability, reliability, and platform resilience.
Increased adoption of SLO-driven engineering and operational maturity practices.
Reduced Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Recover (MTTR).
Increased deployment frequency with improved change success rates.
Reduced operational toil through automation and self-service engineering capabilities.
Reduced enterprise vulnerability remediation cycle times through engineering automation.
Increased adoption of enterprise engineering platforms and reusable automation frameworks.
Accelerated adoption of AI-powered operational capabilities and autonomous remediation workflows.
Experience with several of the following technologies and practices:
Successful Staff Engineers at American Express:
As a Staff Engineer in the Site Reliability Engineering organization, you will help shape the future of engineering at American Express. Your work will influence how thousands of engineers build, deploy, secure, observe, and operate software across one of the world's largest financial technology platforms.
You will have the opportunity to build foundational engineering capabilities, modernize enterprise software delivery, advance AI-powered operations, and drive the next generation of autonomous engineering—all while improving the reliability and resilience of services that millions of customers depend on every day.
Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the United States is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.