Site Reliability Engineer II - CTJ - Top Secret

Company: Microsoft
Location: Reston
Posted on: February 26, 2026

Job Description:

Are you interested in working on cutting-edge cloud security products? Would you like to be part of one of the world’s most advanced cyber-security solutions and protect millions of computers from thousands of active attack attempts, every month? Look no further than the Microsoft Defender engineering team. We are looking for a Site Reliability Engineer II who will be building and delivering cloud solutions to meet the scale that few companies in the industry are required to support. Leveraging state-of-the-art technologies, you will be instrumental in delivering holistic protection within highly sensitive and secure government environments. The Microsoft Defender team is responsible for delivering a constantly evolving set of services and solutions to meet the challenging landscape of our ever-evolving attackers. This is a team which provides on-call operational support and improvements to the operational posture of the Microsoft Defender products within US Government clouds. You will operate our production services, and work closely with other engineering teams to ensure services and systems are highly stable, meet performance SLAs, and meet the expectations of internal and external customers and users. The Microsoft Defender team is responsible for delivering a constantly evolving set of services and solutions to meet the challenging landscape of our ever-evolving attackers. Responsibilities Live Site Operations: Serve as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) in a 24x7 on-call rotation, monitoring service health and responding to incidents within SLA timelines. Automation & Deployment: Contribute to automation efforts and validate code functionality in non-production environments to ensure smooth deployments. Compliance & Security: Support compliance processes by verifying security, privacy, and accessibility standards during onboarding of new technologies. Continuous Learning: Stay current with industry trends and internal tools to improve reliability, performance, and observability at scale. Engineering Best Practices: Apply proven development and scaling practices to meet performance and customer requirements. Cross-Team Collaboration: Communicate effectively with engineering partners to align on goals and deliver user-centric solutions. Incident Response & Postmortems: Address complex live site issues, implement mitigations, and document learnings through postmortems. Qualifications Required Qualifications Masters Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 1 year(s) technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration OR Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 2 years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration OR equivalent experience. Other Quailfications Security Clearance Requirements: Candidates must be able to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: The successful candidate must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret Security Clearance. Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. Failure to maintain or obtain the appropriate clearance and/or customer screening requirements may result in employment action up to and including termination. Clearance Verification: This position requires successful verification of the stated security clearance to meet federal government customer requirements. You will be asked to provide clearance verification information prior to an offer of employment. Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter. Preferred Qualifications Masters Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 3 years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration OR Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 5 years technical experience in software engineering, network engineering, or systems administration OR equivalent experience. 2 years technical experience working with large-scale cloud or distributed systems. Site Reliability Engineering IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $100,600 - $199,000 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $131,400 - $215,400 per year.

Keywords: Microsoft, Bel Air South , Site Reliability Engineer II - CTJ - Top Secret, IT / Software / Systems , Reston, Maryland