Lead Production Engineer

Overview

CHICAGO or NYC

We are partnered with a leading investment firm seeking a Lead Production Engineer to join a high-impact technology team responsible for the reliability, performance, and operational excellence of critical business platforms.

This individual will serve as a key bridge between engineering and business stakeholders, helping drive platform stability, automate operational processes, improve observability, and lead response efforts for complex production issues. The role is ideal for someone who combines strong technical expertise with a proactive approach to problem solving and continuous improvement.

Rather than functioning as a traditional support role, this position focuses on engineering scalable solutions that improve resiliency, reduce operational burden, and enhance the overall user experience across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Own the stability, availability, and performance of critical business applications and technology platforms.
• Lead the investigation and resolution of complex production issues across multiple systems and teams.
• Drive root cause analysis efforts and implement long-term corrective actions to prevent recurring incidents.
• Build automation and tooling to reduce manual operational work and improve support efficiency.
• Partner with software engineers, infrastructure teams, and business stakeholders to improve system reliability and operational processes.
• Develop monitoring, alerting, and observability solutions to proactively identify issues before they impact users.
• Participate in incident response and service restoration efforts while improving processes around problem management.
• Identify opportunities to optimize platform performance, scalability, and resiliency.
• Establish and maintain operational best practices, documentation, and support standards.
• Mentor junior team members and contribute to the overall growth of the production engineering function.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in Production Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, Application Support Engineering, Platform Engineering, or related disciplines.
• Strong experience supporting mission-critical applications within complex enterprise or financial environments.
• Proficiency with Python, Shell scripting, or similar languages used for automation and tooling.
• Strong understanding of Linux and distributed systems.
• Experience with monitoring, observability, logging, and alerting platforms.
• Demonstrated experience leading incident investigations, root cause analysis, and operational improvement initiatives.
• Knowledge of ITSM, incident management, change management, and problem management processes.
• Experience partnering closely with technical and non-technical stakeholders across an organization.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence, prioritize, and drive outcomes across multiple teams.

Preferred Experience

• Background within financial services, investment management, capital markets, trading, or other highly available environments.
• Experience supporting front-office, middle-office, or business-critical investment platforms.
• Familiarity with cloud technologies and modern infrastructure practices.
• Experience with SRE principles, service reliability metrics, and operational excellence frameworks.
• Exposure to enterprise workflow and service management platforms.
• Previous experience leading initiatives that improve platform reliability, automation, and operational maturity.