Application Guide
How to Apply for Site Reliability Engineer
at Sweep
🏢 About Sweep
Sweep is a climate tech company that helps businesses manage and reduce their carbon emissions through comprehensive software solutions. What makes Sweep unique is its focus on combining core platform development with AI-driven solutions to tackle climate change, offering engineers the chance to work on meaningful technology with real environmental impact. Working here means contributing directly to sustainability efforts while building cutting-edge infrastructure.
About This Role
This Site Reliability Engineer role at Sweep involves designing and maintaining highly available, scalable cloud infrastructure specifically for their data platform and AI workloads using Infrastructure as Code. You'll be responsible for enhancing observability with Datadog, developing infrastructure to support machine learning model training and deployment, and participating in incident response as part of the Oak team. This role is impactful because you'll be enabling the core technology that helps businesses reduce their carbon footprint.
💡 A Day in the Life
A typical day might start with reviewing Datadog dashboards and alerts for the Sweep Data platform and AI workloads, then collaborating with engineering teams to design Terraform modules for new infrastructure needs. You could spend time optimizing PostgreSQL performance for high-volume scenarios, implementing observability improvements, or developing scalable infrastructure for machine learning model deployment. The day often includes participating in incident response discussions and contributing to post-mortem reviews as part of the Oak team's reliability efforts.
🚀 Application Tools
🎯 Who Sweep Is Looking For
- Has 3-5+ years of DevOps/SRE experience with deep expertise in AWS (particularly ECS/Fargate), Docker, Terraform, and PostgreSQL at scale, including experience with sharding, clustering, or high-volume scenarios
- Possesses strong Datadog expertise for observability, metrics, dashboards, and alerting, especially in Rails applications and AI workloads
- Has experience designing infrastructure for machine learning model training, deployment, and monitoring in production environments
- Is experienced with continuous integration/deployment pipelines and high-traffic, multi-tenant systems requiring database scaling strategies
📝 Tips for Applying to Sweep
Highlight specific experience with PostgreSQL scaling challenges you've solved (sharding, clustering, high-volume scenarios) in your resume
Create a portfolio or case study showing your Datadog implementation work, especially for Rails applications or AI workloads
Demonstrate your Infrastructure as Code expertise by mentioning specific Terraform modules or AWS services you've implemented for scalable systems
Prepare examples of how you've designed infrastructure specifically for machine learning workloads (training, deployment, monitoring)
Research Sweep's climate tech mission and connect your SRE experience to how reliable infrastructure enables carbon reduction solutions
✉️ What to Emphasize in Your Cover Letter
["Explain how your AWS, Terraform, and Docker experience can help build scalable infrastructure for Sweep's data platform and AI solutions", "Detail your Datadog expertise and how you've improved observability, metrics, and alerting in previous roles", "Describe your experience with PostgreSQL at scale, mentioning specific scaling strategies you've implemented", "Connect your passion for reliable systems to Sweep's mission of helping businesses reduce carbon emissions through technology"]
Generate Cover Letter →🔍 Research Before Applying
To stand out, make sure you've researched:
- → Explore Sweep's product offerings and understand how their software helps businesses manage carbon emissions
- → Research the climate tech industry and Sweep's position within it to understand their market and mission
- → Look into common infrastructure challenges for AI-driven solutions in environmental technology
- → Understand the typical architecture patterns for Rails applications at scale and how they integrate with AI workloads
💬 Prepare for These Interview Topics
Based on this role, you may be asked about:
⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Applying with only generic cloud experience without specific AWS ECS/Fargate, Terraform, or PostgreSQL scaling examples
- Failing to demonstrate Datadog expertise or observability strategy experience in your application materials
- Not showing understanding of how SRE work enables business outcomes, particularly in the context of Sweep's climate mission
📅 Application Timeline
This position is open until filled. However, we recommend applying as soon as possible as roles at mission-driven organizations tend to fill quickly.
Typical hiring timeline:
Application Review
1-2 weeks
Initial Screening
Phone call or written assessment
Interviews
1-2 rounds, usually virtual
Offer
Congratulations!