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Salary: USD 125,000 - 130,000 / annual
Astronomer is seeking a Customer Reliability Engineer to join its Customer Reliability Engineering (CRE) team. This role combines deep technical expertise in Apache Airflow with customer-facing support, serving sophisticated enterprise organizations who depend on Airflow for mission-critical data operations.
You will become an Apache Airflow expert by working directly with customers to solve complex data orchestration challenges. The CRE team differs from traditional support—nearly every ticket requires both strong technical knowledge and customer empathy. You'll tackle problems ranging from configuration optimization to identifying novel Airflow bugs, while gaining exposure across software engineering disciplines including Airflow, Kubernetes, cloud engineering, and distributed systems.
Key responsibilities include: solving challenging Airflow problems for enterprise customers; providing white-glove guidance on production deployments; working directly with customers' data engineers, DevOps teams, and management; owning customer experience and SLA delivery; and contributing feedback that shapes the Airflow project direction. You'll spend up to 20% of time on side projects such as contributing to the open-source Airflow repository or developing Astronomer's internal monitoring systems.
The role requires 4+ years of Python experience, 1+ year of Airflow administration and DAG creation, Kubernetes/Docker/container expertise, and experience with distributed systems on major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure). You should have strong problem-solving abilities, excellent written and verbal communication for customer interactions, and experience mentoring junior team members. Data engineering background is essential.
Bonus qualifications include open-source contributions, customer support experience, SQL/PostgreSQL familiarity, and experience with data tools like Databricks, Snowflake, Redshift, or dbt. The role includes participation in a 24x7 on-call rotation with a specified 6-hour pager period during work hours and paid weekend coverage. A mandatory in-person interview is required as part of the hiring process.
About Astronomer
AI / Data / Infrastructure — data orchestration platform and commercial home of Apache Airflow.
