Observability Engineer

About the role

We are looking for a self-driven Senior Observability Engineer to take ownership of our observability program. We have the tools in place and are collecting logs, but the current setup needs serious optimization. In this role, you will act as the Subject Matter Expert (SME), guiding leadership and building a world-class observability culture from the ground up. You will not just be configuring tools; you will be interviewing developers, uncovering pain points, auditing our current setup, and training the organization on best practices.

Responsibilities

• Audit & Rebuild: Assess our current monitoring stack. Are our dashboards defined properly? Are alerts actionable and noise-free? Are SLIs and SLOs actually set up right?
• Fix the Foundation: Start with the logs. Take our current Elastic/Kibana setup and optimize how logs are collected, structured, and utilized.
• Define the Standards: Establish robust Service Level Indicators (SLIs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) across our application portfolio.
• Instrument Telemetry: Get hands-on with application configuration and telemetry.
• Evangelize & Train: Act as the Observability SME. Present your assessments to leadership, guide the Engineering Manager, and conduct training sessions for technical and non-technical staff across the organization to drive adoption.

Qualifications

• Senior-Level Autonomy: You are completely self-driven and comfortable operating with minimal guidance. You know what a good observability program looks like and can guide a team there.
• Deep SRE & Observability Expertise: Proven experience building observability programs, defining SLI/SLOs, and reducing alert fatigue.
• Hands-on ELK Experience: Experience configuring and optimizing Elastic and Kibana. You don't just look at dashboards; you know how to instrument the apps and configure the telemetry behind them.
• Cloud Infrastructure: Hands-on experience with major cloud platforms is a must. GCP experience is highly preferred.
• Exceptional Communication: You must be able to interview developers to extract technical pain points, present strategic roadmaps to management, and train engineers on new tooling.

Pay & Schedule

• Location: Chicago, Illinois
• Job type: Contract
• Salary: $60 - 70 per hour
• Work hours: 9am to 5pm
• Education: Bachelors