Observability Engineer

Are you a Observability Engineer and eager to consider a new project?
How about a role at a large Telecom company in Amsterdam?

General information

• Start date:                         ASAP
• Duration:                          
• No. of working hours:    37 hours per week
• Location:                           Hybrid, in Amsterdam
• Contract type:                  Payroll or ZZP
• VISA sponsorship:            Yes, if already in NL

We are looking for a Senior Observability Engineer who thinks beyond tools and dashboards, and instead approaches observability as a platform and product. This role is not about maintaining an existing stack, it is about redefining and evolving our observability ecosystem.
Over the coming months, you will play a key engineering leadership role in a major observability
stack transformation, shaping the vision, architecture, and adoption of a modern, scalable
observability platform. You will work across teams to move from reactive monitoring toward
proactive, insight-driven engineering.
You will be expected to challenge the status quo, make architectural trade-offs, and design solutions
that scale across a complex, cloud-native environment.

What Makes This Role Different

• You will lead an observability transformation, not just support it
• You will define direction and architecture, not just implement requirements
• You will work on platform-level challenges, not isolated team needs
• You will influence engineering practices and developer experience, not just tooling
• You will operate in an environment where ambiguity is expected, and ownership is key

If you are primarily motivated by maintaining stable systems with clearly defined tasks, this role is
likely not a good fit.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the observability platform as a product, focusing on scalability, usability, and adoption
• Define and drive the target architecture for observability across the organization
• Make strategic decisions on tooling, integrations, and telemetry design (metrics, logs, traces)
• Balance standardization vs. team autonomy across a multi-team environment
• Drive adoption of modern observability practices (e.g., OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, SLO-based monitoring)
• Evaluate and challenge the current stack, identifying opportunities for simplification, consolidation, and innovation
• Design observability solutions for distributed, cloud-native systems (Kubernetes, microservices)
• Translate ambiguous problems into clear, scalable technical approaches
• Anticipate future scaling and complexity challenges and design accordingly
• Ensure observability data is actionable, meaningful, and cost-efficient
• Improve how engineers interact with observability (self-service, faster debugging, clearer insights)
• Reduce cognitive load by creating intuitive patterns, standards, and reusable solutions
• Coach and guide engineers on observability best practices
• Design and implement solutions using tools such as Grafana, Elasticsearch, and the ELK
• Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) to visualize metrics, logs, and traces, providing actionable insights into system performance.
• Configure and optimize Elasticsearch and the ELK Stack for log aggregation, search, and analysis to support observability goals
• Integrate observability pipelines with systems like Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, and CloudWatch
• Build and optimize log pipelines, metrics collection, and distributed tracing setups
• Define and implement alerting strategies focused on signal over noise
• Automation & Optimization
• Automate provisioning and configuration of observability tools using Infrastructure as Code
• (Terraform, Ansible)
• Optimize performance and cost of observability platforms such as ELK Stack & Grafana (e.g., index lifecycle management, data retention strategies)
• Continuously improve efficiency of data ingestion, storage, and querying
• Script automation tasks (e.g., dashboard provisioning, alert setup) using Python, Bash, or
• Grafana/Elastic APIs.
• Analyze telemetry data to detect trends, anomalies, and potential failures in distributed systems.

Requirements

• 5–8+ years of experience in observability, platform engineering, or distributed systems
• Proven experience in designing or evolving observability platforms, not just operating them
• Strong hands-on experience with Grafana and Elasticsearch / ELK Stack
• Experience with OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and modern observability patterns
• Solid understanding of metrics, logs, and traces—and when to use each effectively
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS) and containerized environments (Docker,
• Kubernetes)
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible)
• Ability to script and automate (e.g., Python, Bash, APIs)

Signals of a Strong Candidate

• You have rethought or significantly improved an observability setup before
• You have strong opinions on what good observability looks like and can justify them
• You think in systems and trade-offs, not just tools
• You naturally look for simplification and leverage
• You are comfortable taking ownership in uncertain, evolving environments

Does this role spark your interest? Then please provide me with your most recent resume and contact details, so that we can discuss this vacancy in more detail by phone!