Principal Software Development Engineer (Observability)

TL;DR

Principal Software Development Engineer (Observability): Leading the architecture, design, and implementation of a centralized, scalable, and cost-effective observability platform used by all engineering teams across hirify.global with an accent on core telemetry pipelines, OpenTelemetry adoption, and platform governance. Focus on building highly scalable and resilient data pipelines, automating infrastructure lifecycle, and providing technical leadership and mentorship for a dynamic engineering organization.

Location: Seattle, Washington, United States or San Jose, California, United States (This role offers a flexible work model within these locations)

Salary: $242,000–$338,500 (San Jose) or $224,000–$313,500 (Seattle)

Company

hirify.global powers global travel for everyone, designing cutting-edge tech and groundbreaking solutions for partners.

What you will do

• Lead the architecture and implementation of highly scalable and resilient telemetry pipelines for logs, metrics, and traces.
• Spearhead the strategy, rollout, and support for OpenTelemetry across thousands of services.
• Design and build capabilities for data governance, cost allocation, and resource management within the observability platform.
• Act as a thought leader, driving the adoption of observability best practices across the engineering organization.
• Automate infrastructure lifecycle using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform and/or Crossplane.
• Provide technical leadership, mentor senior engineers, and serve as the final escalation point for complex production incidents.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on building and operating large-scale distributed systems, infrastructure automation, or configuration management.
• Deep expertise in observability principles and the "three pillars": logs, metrics, and traces.
• Strong hands-on proficiency with observability technologies such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, Splunk, and OpenTelemetry.
• Proficient in one or more of: Go, Java, Python.
• Solid understanding of cloud-native architectures (Kubernetes, Docker, microservices) and major cloud platforms (AWS preferred).

Nice to have

• Experience designing, building, and operating highly available, scalable, and resilient platforms.
• Excellent hands-on coder who understands and appreciates bigger-picture architectural and business concerns.
• Clear communicator with the ability to concisely explain complex technical details to a wide variety of audiences.
• Experience mentoring other senior engineers and establishing standards for operational excellence and code quality.

Culture & Benefits

• Full benefits package including travel perks, generous time-off, and parental leave.
• Flexible work model with career development resources.
• Open culture where everyone belongs and differences are celebrated.
• Wellness & travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and an International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership.
• Named as a Best Place to Work on Glassdoor in 2024.