Software Engineer - Platform Observability and Intelligence

Fastly•San Francisco, CA

1d•$155,370 - $186,444•Hybrid

About The Position

Fastly is seeking a full-stack software engineer to join its Platform Observability and Intelligence (POI) team. The POI team is responsible for Fastly's internal observability stack (including tools like Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, and OpenTelemetry) across cloud infrastructure and physical hardware, Fastly's internal developer portal built on Backstage, and an internal suite of tools and data pipelines for network and financial data insights. This role will specifically contribute to the observability stack and developer portal, while also working across all team software. This is a generalist, mid-level position for an engineer with a few years of experience looking to grow their career. The ideal candidate is curious, proactive, and eager to take on impactful work, contributing to projects that enhance how Fastly engineers understand and operate their services, with opportunities to own larger pieces of work over time.

Requirements

2+ years of professional software engineering experience, with demonstrated ability to deliver quality work on reasonably well-defined projects with limited oversight
Experience in a statically typed, modern back-end language (Go, Java, Rust, etc.)
Experience in modern front-end frameworks (React, etc.), or a willingness to dive in and become proficient
Experience with SQL and database-driven applications
Experience working with Linux systems and the shell
Experience working with distributed systems or cloud-based services, and an interest in developing deeper expertise in operating and debugging them
Comfort with large and unfamiliar codebases: jumping into a system you didn't build, figuring out the context, and contributing with confidence. Our stack is broad, and you will regularly work in code you haven't seen before, including code written at Fastly and open-source codebases.
Strong debugging skills: forming hypotheses and narrowing down causes methodically. You’re willing to step outside your primary area of expertise to get to the bottom of something.
Clear, thoughtful writing and communication. You understand that a precise Slack message, a well-written pull request description, or a clear explanation to a teammate is just as important as the code itself.
A service mindset. The people who use our tools depend on them to do their jobs. You care about their experience, you're approachable when they have questions, and you follow through and close the communication loop
A proactive disposition. You take ownership of your responsibilities. When you finish a task, you look for the next useful thing. When you see something that could be better, you say so.
Comfort working within lightweight agile processes. You participate constructively in planning and retrospectives, and you see team rituals as tools for coordination, productivity, and collaboration.
A desire to grow in your skills, knowledge, and scope. Enthusiasm for learning new technologies.

Nice To Haves

Backstage or other internal developer portal frameworks, open-source software in general
Enterprise-scale observability systems (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, Datadog, ELK, or similar)
Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), orchestration (Kubernetes), infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, Ansible, Chef)
Data science and data engineering, capacity planning, cost modeling, or FinOps practices
Network protocols and infrastructure, datacenter infrastructure, physical server administration
Training, teaching, or developing documentation and educational materials for internal tools

Responsibilities

Design, build and maintain software and platform capabilities that power Fastly’s internal observability function and developer experience
Contribute to the development of our internal developer portal, helping engineering teams discover services, documentation, and operational tooling all in one place
Work with your team to break down project requirements into concrete tasks, and take ownership of your assigned work through to completion
Debug and resolve issues across the software stack, from datacenter hardware to the browser, often spanning multiple services and data sources
Communicate clearly about the status of your work and any problems you encounter. Write useful updates, ask good questions, and raise issues early rather than at the deadline
Collaborate with other engineers on the team. Provide thoughtful code review and share context and knowledge.
Participate constructively in team planning and retrospectives
Participate in on-call rotation as required, and respond to incidents within the team's SLA while on-call.