Observability Lead-Sr. Infrastructure Engineer

Truist•Charlotte, NC

5d•Onsite

About The Position

We are seeking a highly experienced and strategic Observability Lead-Sr. Infrastructure Engineer with a strong Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE), software development, event streaming, and technical leadership focus to define, implement, and scale enterprise observability capabilities. This role combines technical leadership in observability strategy with hands-on, customer-facing engineering, application development expertise, and Kafka/event-driven integration knowledge to deliver high-impact solutions across complex enterprise environments. As an Observability Lead, you will establish the vision and direction for metrics, logs, traces, telemetry pipelines, event streaming, and developer-enabled observability patterns using modern standards such as OpenTelemetry and a combination of open-source and commercial tooling. You will also operate as a forward deployed partner, working directly with engineering, SRE, platform teams, software development teams, and business stakeholders to solve real-world problems and deliver tailored observability implementations in production. In this role, you will drive a transition from reactive monitoring toward proactive, intelligence-driven observability. You will influence architectural decisions, embed observability into the software development lifecycle, guide code-level instrumentation and performance engineering practices, and ensure solutions are scalable and adaptable to diverse use cases, including event-driven and Kafka-based architectures. The role requires the ability to read, troubleshoot, and guide improvements to application code; design automation, APIs, integrations, collectors, dashboards, Kafka-aware telemetry flows, and reusable tooling; and help engineering teams adopt observability as part of day-to-day software delivery. Success in this position means improving system reliability, reducing mean-time-to-detect and resolve (MTTD/MTTR), enabling faster root-cause analysis, increasing engineering velocity, and creating a consistent, high-fidelity observability experience. You will also translate field learnings into reusable implementation patterns, code assets, automation, Kafka/event-streaming practices, developer standards, and enterprise platform capabilities that inform platform strategy and observability standards.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field.
Minimum of 7 years of professional experience in infrastructure engineering.
Advanced knowledge of enterprise infrastructure technologies including cloud, network, database, storage, platform, computing, and middleware.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree and ten or more years of experience, or an equivalent combination of education and work experience
Hands-on experience with OpenTelemetry, including application instrumentation, collector configuration, semantic conventions, and telemetry pipeline design
Experience with observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, Elastic, Splunk, Dynatrace, Datadog, or similar platforms
Strong software development experience in one or more languages such as Python, Go, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, .NET/C#, Bash, or PowerShell
Ability to read, debug, profile, and guide improvements to application code to identify performance bottlenecks, inefficient queries, memory pressure, dependency latency, threading issues, or error-handling gaps
Experience designing and developing APIs, automation frameworks, command-line utilities, integrations, collectors, dashboards, or reusable internal tools that support observability and operational workflows
Strong Kafka or event streaming platform experience, including producers, consumers, topics, partitions, consumer groups, Kafka Connect, event-driven integration patterns, consumer lag analysis, throughput troubleshooting, and monitoring of Kafka-based services
Strong understanding of software development lifecycle practices including Git-based source control, code review, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, release practices, secure coding, and developer enablement
Strong background in Kubernetes, cloud platforms, containers, microservices, service-oriented architectures, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native application patterns
Experience with infrastructure as code or configuration automation tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Helm, or similar technologies
Experience defining observability strategies, technical standards, developer enablement patterns, event-streaming observability patterns, and engineering roadmaps across multiple application or platform teams
Experience in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, developer advocacy, or customer-facing technical leadership roles
Proven ability to translate customer-specific implementations, code assets, event-streaming patterns, and field learnings into reusable platform capabilities, enterprise standards, and strategic technology recommendations

Responsibilities

Works to achieve operational targets with major impact on the infrastructure engineering department or job area results and contributes to the development of goals for area of responsibility.
Designs, builds, manages, and implements enterprise infrastructure technology platforms and systems across cloud, network, database, storage, platform, computing, or middleware domains.
Develops and applies automation, monitoring, and optimization techniques to ensure high availability and performance of infrastructure.
Manages large infrastructure projects and programs aligned with organizational strategy and regulatory requirements.
Collaborates with cross-functional teams and external partners to integrate new technologies and continuously improve infrastructure standards and processes.
Troubleshoots and resolves complex technical issues impacting infrastructure performance and reliability.
Ensures compliance with technology strategies, standards, and governance to mitigate risks and ensure regulatory adherence.
Reviews infrastructure designs, configurations, and procedures to support operational consistency and knowledge sharing.
Provides strong technical guidance, training, and direction to infrastructure teams and lower-level technical professionals.
Demonstrates innovative influence with stakeholders in supporting business objectives and technical strategic objectives.