Principal Site Reliability Engineer

Since being founded in 2018, Copper has been building the standard for institutional digital asset infrastructure with a focus on custody, collateral management, and prime services.

Led by Amar Kuchinad, Copper's Global CEO, the firm provides a comprehensive suite of custody, trading and settlement solutions that reduce counterparty risk and bring greater capital and operational efficiency to digital asset markets. At the heart of Copper's offering is Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology – the gold standard in secure custody. Copper’s multi-award winning custody system is unique in that it can be connected to centralised exchanges, DeFi applications and even staking pools without the assets leaving the custody.

Built on top of this state-of-the-art custody, ClearLoop is the first solution in the market that overcomes a growing industry challenge; counterparty risk with exchanges. This solution underpins a full prime services offering, connecting global exchanges, and enabling customers to trade and settle directly from the safety of their MPC-secured wallets. By reducing settlement time for transfers to a few milliseconds (without blockchain network dependency) and offering enhanced security measures, ClearLoop is rapidly reshaping the way asset managers trade and manage capital.

In addition to industry-leading security certifications, Copper has one of the strongest insurance coverages in the industry from an A+ rated insurer, positioning the firm as the partner of choice for institutions seeking to safeguard their assets.

Department Overview: 
The Engineering department is the backbone of Copper; entrusted with the critical responsibility of building and securing the infrastructure that safeguards billions of dollars in digital assets. We operate at the intersection of traditional institutional finance and decentralized blockchain technology.

Team Purpose: 
We believe the best infrastructure comes from curious minds working openly together. Our engineering organisation brings together people with diverse backgrounds and experiences who genuinely enjoy solving hard problems. We foster a blame-free, intellectually honest environment where you're encouraged to take thoughtful risks and think big. You'll have the autonomy to own meaningful projects while gaining the support you need to grow your skills and advance your career.

Role Purpose: 

We're looking for a site reliability engineer at the intersection of software development and systems engineering. In this role, your focus will be delivering the reliability, performance, and uptime our clients depend on, whilst continuously improving how our systems operate.

Day-to-day, you'll tackle complex infrastructure challenges through a combination of thoughtful engineering and considered automation. Rather than fighting fires, you'll work to prevent them. You'll analyse system capacity and performance, identify bottlenecks, and build solutions that scale across our department, not just one team.

You will collaborate closely with the DevOps team, but focusing primarily on reliability engineering, operational excellence, and production readiness across the broader engineering org.

Key Responsibilities:  

Shape SRE; Define how we think about reliability, observability, and operational excellence. Drive the adoption of SRE principles across the organization while building the systems and processes that make those principles measurable – think SLIs, SLOs and error budgets.

Scale Through Automation; Champion architectural improvements that enhance both system reliability and deployment velocity. Provide consultation on system architecture, building reusable platforms and frameworks, planning capacity needs, and conducting production readiness reviews to ensure services launch and operate successfully.

Drive Technical Excellence; Engage in and improve the lifecycle of microservices, from inception through deployment, operation, observability, and continuous refinement.

Lead Through Influence; Partner with engineering and product leadership to embed reliability into our product development lifecycle. Conduct blameless postmortems and drive systemic improvements in incident management. Mentor engineers across the organisation on SRE practices, helping teams take ownership of their service reliability.

While this role begins as an IC position, it will play a key part in shaping the future of SRE at Copper

Skills and Experience: 

Essential  

• Experience in designing, analysing, and troubleshooting distributed systems or micro-services architectures.
• Established expertise in observability and incident management.
• Proven experience in driving organizational Change
• Excellent communication skills, with a systematic problem-solving approach.

Desirable  

• Experience working with production workloads in AWS
• Experience working in financial services or similarly regulated environments
• Interest in blockchain based technologies and/or ‘decentralised’ finance
• Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering.

Why Copper?  

At Copper, we keep innovation, openness, and curiosity at the centre of everything we do. Here, bold ideas get the spotlight, learning is constant, and diversity shapes our team from the ground up.

Jump into a fast-moving, dynamic team that loves a challenge and knows how to have fun along the way. Collaboration is just as important as results—you’ll be surrounded by smart, driven colleagues in London and across our APAC, Switzerland, UAE, and US offices.

Hybrid working model – we believe in the value of bringing people together and at the same time we embrace the adaptability of flexibly working.

Diversity and inclusion matter to us – they’re woven into Copper life. From employee-led groups like Women at Copper to a committee focused on community and wellbeing, you’ll have a network that supports you from day one. Everyone voice matters.

If you’re looking to ramp up your career, or keen to do something new in your field, with us, you’ll keep moving forward.

Ready to make your mark, keep growing, and join a supportive, dynamic team? Copper’s the place.

The interview process at Copper  

Our interview process is designed to be thoughtful, efficient, and engaging. While specific steps may vary slightly depending on the role, the typical journey includes:

1. Initial Screening A brief conversation with our Talent Acquisition team to explore your background, motivations, and alignment with the role.
2. Technical Interview A virtual session conducted via Microsoft Teams, where you'll engage with team members to discuss relevant skills, problem-solving approaches, and technical experience.
3. In-Person Interview A conversation focused on team dynamics, collaboration style, and any final technical questions. This may be with cross-functional peers or leadership.
4. Cultural Interview A Conversation that explores our motivations, values and Communication style, helping us understand how you collaborate and align with our team culture 

Additional steps may be added based on the role's complexity or seniority. We aim to keep the process transparent and respectful of your time.

Benefits 

In return for everything you can bring to Copper, we can offer you an exciting, challenging role in a fast-growing and dynamic business, with career opportunities and welcoming working environment. Some of our key UK benefits are highlighted below: 

• Paid Time Off - A minimum of 35 days of paid time off per year, inclusive of annual leave and public holidays. Employees also receive one additional day of annual leave for each year of service.
• Comprehensive Medical Insurance - Inclusive of dental, optical, audiology, and mental health coverage, with medical history disregarded
• Life Insurance
• Enhanced Pension Contributions - Includes an enhanced employer matching contribution
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

If you think you have everything we're looking for and more, then we'd love you to apply for the opportunity. 

Copper is an equal opportunity employer. We embrace diversity and equal opportunities in a serious way. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. The more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. So, bring us your experience, perspectives, and skills. It is in our differences that we will continue to grow and ensure Copper is transforming how institutional investors engage with digital assets. Copper is a Disability Confident Employer, please let us know if you have a disability. If you require us to provide any assistance during the recruitment process, then we would ask you to highlight this to us and we will be happy to accommodate.