Senior Manager, Site Reliability Engineering (EMEA)

General Motors is transforming the automotive landscape through its next-generation Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) platform and a rapidly expanding portfolio of connected services. In EMEA, reliability is a core differentiator — from always-on connectivity through  OnStar , to high-scale  Data  platforms, to emerging product lines such as  fleet  and  energy  experiences. To enable this, we’re scaling our  Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)  leadership in Dublin — responsible for keeping critical customer- and vehicle-facing services resilient, performant, and scalable across regions and time zones. 

We are seeking an  experienced Senior Manager  to oversee  SRE for Europe, Middle East, and Africa — setting strategy, operating mechanisms, and talent direction for teams supporting Data Engineering, OnStar, and new product surfaces in fleet and energy. This is a  people-leader  role with scope across multiple countries and stakeholders, and a strong expectation of leading leaders while staying close to the technology. The role is expected to be approximately  80% leadership  and  20% hands-on  (architecture reviews, reliability design, incident leadership, and occasional direct technical contribution) to ensure you remain connected to the products and platforms you’re accountable for. This role is based in  Dublin  with team members currently located across  Ireland, England, and Israel . 

What You’ll Be Doing  

• Set and communicate the  EMEA SRE strategy and operating model  (SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, incident/problem/change management, and toil reduction) aligned to business outcomes across Data Engineering, OnStar, fleet, and energy. 

• Lead leaders and engineers across multiple countries — building capability, setting clear expectations, and developing a culture rooted in  operational excellence , psychological safety, and ownership. 

• Own reliability outcomes for critical services: availability, latency, durability, capacity, and cost — with crisp, measurable  customer-facing KPIs  and reporting that translate technical risk into business impact. 

• Partner with product, engineering, security, and operations leadership to shape roadmaps and ensure reliability is embedded early for new launches and expansions in fleet and energy. 

• Drive  observability strategy  (metrics, logs, traces) with actionable dashboards and alerting that supports fast detection, diagnosis, and recovery. 

• Lead major incident response for critical customer-facing services, run blameless postmortems, and ensure systemic fixes land through strong prioritization and follow-through. 

• Be hands-on (about 20%): participate in architecture and design reviews, review critical changes, and occasionally contribute to automation and reliability engineering in production. 

• Build the team: hiring, onboarding, workforce planning, and succession — strengthening leadership bench and ensuring sustainable on-call and support models across time zones. 

• Ensure reliability practices align with  privacy, security, and compliance  expectations relevant to customer data and connected services. 

What You Bring  

• 12+ years in  SRE, DevOps, production engineering, or large-scale systems , including senior leadership experience overseeing multiple teams and/or leaders. 

• Proven ability to define strategy and deliver outcomes through others — setting goals, creating operating mechanisms, and driving measurable improvements in reliability, performance, and customer experience. 

• Deep expertise in modern SRE:  SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, incident/problem management, observability, capacity planning, and DR/BCP . 

• Track record building and operating  high-scale, cloud-native systems  (AWS, Azure, and/or GCP), with strong operational rigor and cost awareness. 

• Strong technical foundation: containers and orchestration ( Kubernetes ), CI/CD, and automation via IaC (e.g., Terraform/CloudFormation) and policy-as-code. 

• Ability to stay hands-on (about 20%): architecture/design reviews, deep technical incident leadership, and targeted contributions in languages such as  Python, Go, or Java . 

• Demonstrated  executive communication and influence  — able to translate risk into business trade-offs, align cross-functional leaders, and drive decision-making in ambiguous environments. 

• Experience leading distributed teams across time zones and cultures; creates inclusive environments, develops leaders, and builds sustainable operating rhythms. 

• Familiarity with privacy, data protection, and security practices relevant to connected services and customer/vehicle data is a plus.