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Breadcrumb - Senior DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer - Recruiter Screen Prep ​

Position: Senior DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer
Company: Breadcrumb
Location: Melbourne, Brisbane, or Remote within Australia
Interview Type: First round - Recruiter screen (light and general questions)

🎯 Role Overview ​

Breadcrumb builds safety and compliance technology for construction and industrial teams. This role is hands-on and broad: platform reliability, secure and cost-effective infrastructure, delivery maturity, coaching teams, and improving developer experience.

Key Focus Areas:

  • Kubernetes, containers, cloud services, and CI/CD pipeline reliability
  • Infrastructure modernization, patching, security hardening, and shared tooling ownership
  • Developer productivity via internal tooling and reduced operational friction
  • Deployment safety (blue-green, canary) and better pre-production validation
  • SRE enablement across product squads (scalability, automation, incident readiness)
  • Strong *nix fundamentals and practical platform troubleshooting

🏢 About Breadcrumb ​

Intel: Australian construction-tech safety/compliance platform, high-growth profile, remote/hybrid friendly, product-led environment.
Culture Keywords (from JD): Curious, pragmatic, ownership-minded, collaborative, process-aware (not process-heavy), fast-moving.
Tech Environment (from JD): Kubernetes, cloud, CI/CD, Terraform/Pulumi, TypeScript/C# bonus, AWS/Azure exposure.
Note: This is likely a breadth-heavy role. Emphasize your cross-domain outcomes and ability to reduce friction for many teams.

📊 Your Experience Match ​

✅ Strong Alignments ​

  1. Kubernetes Platform Reliability (Domain)

    • Led ECS -> Kubernetes migration for 100+ microservices.
    • Enabled 20+ product teams to deploy independently and safely.

  2. GitOps + Delivery Maturity (Domain)

    • Migrated 15+ teams to GitOps workflows across Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and Argo CD.
    • Improved resilience and rollback confidence through standardized platform patterns.

  3. Developer Experience + Internal Tooling (Viator)

    • Built AI Slack support bot that cut first-response time by 50%.
    • Delivered token automation reclaiming 10% team velocity.

  4. Observability + Incident Response (Envato / Domain / Avinet)

    • Datadog migration cut observability cost by 45%.
    • Incident resolution improved by 40%; MTTR improvements up to 70% in prior role.

  5. Infrastructure as Code + Compliance Discipline (Avinet / illion / Domain)

    • Terraform-led infrastructure standardization and audit-oriented improvements.
    • Supported SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 compliance outcomes.

🔄 Transferable Skills ​

  • Cloud breadth: Deep AWS production experience; can map proven patterns into Azure quickly.
  • Cross-functional influence: Regularly worked with product teams and platform stakeholders.
  • Scale-up readiness: Comfortable with context switching, ambiguity, and autonomous delivery.

📈 Areas to Develop ​

  • Azure production depth: Be explicit about your AWS-first background and ramp approach.
  • Industry specifics (construction workflows): Ask recruiter where reliability pain is highest (field operations, mobile sync, compliance data, integrations).

💬 Recruiter Screen Questions and Talking Points ​

1. "Tell me about yourself / Walk me through your resume" ​

Your Answer (2-3 minutes):

"I am a Senior Platform Engineer with 13 years in DevOps, SRE, and cloud infrastructure, focused on making delivery safer and faster at scale. Most recently at Viator, I worked across developer experience and automation, including an AI support bot that reduced first-response time by 50%, token automation that reclaimed 10% team velocity, and observability standards across 40 services.

Before that at Domain, I helped migrate 100+ microservices from ECS to Kubernetes, enabled 20+ teams with self-serve deployment, and rolled out GitOps and SLO patterns. At Envato, I improved deployment reliability and reduced observability spend by 45% while improving incident response.

I am strongest in roles where reliability, platform simplicity, and developer productivity all matter, which is why this Breadcrumb role is a strong fit."

2. "Why are you interested in Breadcrumb / this role?" ​

Your Answer:

"Three reasons:

  1. Mission fit: Safety and compliance products depend on trust, and trust depends on reliability.
  2. Role fit: The role combines platform ownership, CI/CD, observability, and team enablement, which maps directly to my recent work.
  3. Environment fit: I enjoy scale-up environments where you can make visible impact quickly by reducing operational friction and improving engineering quality."

3. "Why are you leaving your current role?" ​

Your Answer:

"My recent move is due to organisational restructuring. I am proud of what we delivered, and now I am looking for a role where I can keep doing hands-on platform and reliability work with broad impact across engineering teams."

4. "What is your experience with Kubernetes and cloud platforms?" ​

Your Answer:

"At Domain, I helped lead migration from ECS to Kubernetes for more than 100 microservices, with a strong focus on operability and team self-service. I am deep on AWS in production. For Azure, I use a pattern-mapping approach: identity, networking, observability, and IaC principles transfer well, so I can ramp quickly while still shipping value early."

5. "Tell me about a complex infrastructure problem you solved" ​

Your Answer (STAR short form):

  • Situation: Fragmented platform with high operational overhead and scaling constraints.
  • Task: Modernize runtime and deployment model without disrupting product delivery.
  • Action: Drove Kubernetes/GitOps migration patterns, standardized platform workflows, improved observability and operational guardrails.
  • Result: 100+ services migrated, 20+ teams self-serving deployments, improved reliability posture and delivery confidence.

6. "How do you approach CI/CD and release safety?" ​

Your Answer:

"I optimize for safe speed. I standardize pipelines, bake in quality/security/observability checks early, and make rollbacks fast and predictable. I like progressive delivery patterns (for example canary or phased rollout) and clear operational signals before broad release."

7. "How do you improve developer experience?" ​

Your Answer:

"I treat developer experience as a product: remove repeated friction, automate repetitive tasks, and provide paved paths that are secure by default. At Viator, this included support automation and platform metrics that made pain visible and measurable."

8. "What is your incident management style?" ​

Your Answer:

"Clear ownership, calm communication, and fast containment first. Then I focus on learning loops: better alerts, stronger runbooks, and guardrails that prevent recurrence. My track record includes meaningful MTTR and response-time improvements across multiple roles."

9. "How do you handle context switching in fast-paced teams?" ​

Your Answer:

"I run a visible prioritization model: production risk first, then high-leverage platform improvements. I keep stakeholders aligned with concise async updates, and I protect deep-work blocks for high-impact initiatives."

10. "Do you have Infrastructure as Code experience?" ​

Your Answer:

"Yes, Terraform has been core to my platform work. I focus on reusable modules, reviewable changes, and standards that make compliance and operations easier rather than slower."

11. "Do you have questions for me?" ​

Your Questions (High-signal):

  1. "What reliability or scalability issues are most painful today?"
  2. "Where does engineering lose the most time from commit to production?"
  3. "How are incident ownership and on-call responsibilities currently structured?"
  4. "What would success for this role look like at 30/60/90 days?"
  5. "How is cloud responsibility split between AWS and Azure today?"
  6. "Which internal tooling gaps cause the most repeated developer friction?"

🎯 Key Talking Points to Emphasize ​

  1. Scale outcomes: 100+ service platform migration and 20+ teams enabled.
  2. Reliability + speed: delivery improvements without sacrificing control.
  3. Measurable impact: 50% faster support response, 45% observability cost reduction, 10% team velocity reclaim.
  4. Enablement mindset: build systems and tooling that make the right path the easy path.
  5. Hands-on leadership: technical depth plus coaching and cross-team influence.

⚠️ Potential Concerns and Responses ​

Concern: "Azure depth" ​

Response: "Fair call. My deepest production experience is in AWS, but I have repeatedly transferred platform patterns quickly across environments. I would prioritize one meaningful Azure workload early and deliver measurable value while expanding depth."

Concern: "Can you handle broad scope and context switching?" ​

Response: "Yes. My recent roles were cross-domain by design. I use explicit prioritization and outcome metrics to keep quality high while moving quickly."

Concern: "Will you be hands-on enough for this role?" ​

Response: "Absolutely. My best work is hands-on platform engineering with visible operational outcomes, not just strategy decks."

📝 Additional Notes ​

  • Tone: Direct, collaborative, practical (Australian professional style).
  • Keep it conversational: Recruiter round should be crisp and outcome-focused.
  • Stay evidence-based: Tie claims to your documented results.
  • Show fit for scale-up culture: curiosity, ownership, and execution under ambiguity.

✅ Pre-Interview Checklist ​

  • [ ] Rehearse 90-second intro and two STAR stories (migration, incident/reliability)
  • [ ] Prepare concise Azure ramp narrative (AWS-first but transferable patterns)
  • [ ] Review your quantified outcomes from Viator, Domain, Envato, illion
  • [ ] Prepare 4-6 recruiter questions from this guide
  • [ ] Confirm interview setup (audio/video/network, quiet room, notes ready)
  • [ ] Join 5 minutes early

Good luck, Lucas - this role matches your strongest pattern: hands-on reliability engineering that scales team productivity and platform trust.