Staff Software Engineer

Staff Software Engineer

Who are we?

Help us challenge assumptions, uncover bias, and remove barriers—because progress starts with fresh ideas. You’ll find belonging, purpose, and a team that welcomes you—because when you feel valued, you’re empowered to do your best work.

Role Summary

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer – Observability Platform Engineering to design, build, and scale our enterprise observability platform. You will develop monitoring, logging, tracing, and automation solutions that provide end-to-end visibility across cloud-native applications and infrastructure.

Working closely with Software Engineering, Platform Engineering, SRE, DevOps, and Cloud teams, you will drive platform reliability, operational excellence, and developer productivity through modern observability practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain enterprise-scale observability platforms.
• Build end-to-end observability solutions using Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, and OpenTelemetry.
• Develop automation and platform tooling using Python.
• Define monitoring standards, dashboards, alerting strategies, and SLI/SLOs.
• Implement observability for Kubernetes-based, cloud-native, and distributed applications.
• Collaborate with Engineering, Platform, DevOps, and SRE teams to improve reliability and scalability.
• Lead technical design discussions and drive observability best practices.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues, perform root cause analysis, and implement long-term reliability improvements.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to the growth of the engineering organization.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5–7+ years of experience in Software Engineering, Platform Engineering, SRE, DevOps, or Observability Engineering.
• Strong hands-on experience with:
  • Grafana
  • Prometheus
  • Loki
  • Tempo
  • OpenTelemetry
• Strong programming skills in Python and working knowledge of Java or another object-oriented language.
• Experience with AWS and/or GCP, Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, Git, CI/CD, and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Helm, or Ansible).
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices, REST APIs, monitoring, logging, tracing, and application performance monitoring.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Java or Go.
• OpenTelemetry instrumentation.
• Kafka or other event-driven platforms.
• ELK/OpenSearch.
• Integrating observability tools with ServiceNow, PagerDuty, Jira, Slack, or Microsoft Teams.
• Cloud or Kubernetes-related certifications.

Key Skills

Observability: Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, OpenTelemetry, Monitoring, Logging, Distributed Tracing, APM, SLI/SLO

Programming: Python, Java (preferred), Go (good to have)

Cloud & Platform: AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker, Microservices

DevOps: CI/CD, Git, Linux, Infrastructure as Code, Platform Engineering, SRE

What Success Looks Like

• Build and scale enterprise observability platforms supporting mission-critical applications.
• Improve reliability, availability, and operational excellence through modern observability practices.
• Drive automation that enhances engineering productivity.
• Establish observability standards and influence engineering decisions across teams.
• Enable faster incident detection, investigation, and resolution while fostering a culture of engineering excellence.

Equinix is committed to ensuring that our employment process is open to all individuals, including those with a disability.  If you are a qualified candidate and need assistance or an accommodation, please let us know by completing this form.

Equinix is an Equal Employment Opportunity and, in the U.S., an Affirmative Action employer.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to unlawful consideration of race, color, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, place of birth, citizenship, sex, pregnancy / childbirth or related medical conditions, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or domestic partnership status, age, veteran or military status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, political / organizational affiliation, status as a victim or family member of a victim of crime or abuse, or any other status protected by applicable law. 

We use artificial intelligence in our hiring process. Learn more here.

This posting is for a backfill position, meaning it is to fill an existing vacancy within our organization.

Experience Level

Senior Level