Staff Software Engineer, Observability

Temporal Technologies; Toronto; On-site; CAD 235,000 - 386,000; Full time

Job summary

Temporal Technologies is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for the Infrastructure Team, focused on Observability for internal platforms and customer-facing tooling. You will drive end-to-end software development, design scalable systems, and mentor teammates in a mission-critical environment.

You will collaborate across teams to ensure performance, reliability, and actionable insights, contributing to the Temporal ecosystem and shaping how developers monitor and operate at scale.

Qualifications

• Expert-level knowledge of architecture and services of assigned domain.
• Strong command over all aspects of the Temporal ecosystem.
• Deeply understand needs of internal developers and external customers.
• Experience with observability tooling and distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end software development lifecycle: requirements solicitation, design, implementation, deployment, support and maintenance.
• Lead feature design, review with stakeholders, iterate to drive consensus.
• Document design choices and operational knowledge for deployment and management.
• Provide test and production readiness coverage for unit, integration, and performance.

Skills

Distributed systems

Observability pipelines

Go programming

Kubernetes

SQL

Cloud: AWS/GCP

System architecture

On-call experience

Mentorship

Tools

Prometheus

Grafana

Clickhouse

Loki

Thanos

Kubernetes

Job description

We have an opening for a Staff Software Engineer on our Infrastructure Team, with specific focus on Observability - both internal and customer-facing. This is an opportunity to join a mission‑critical engineering team that is driving the productivity and reliability of Temporal's developers and core platforms, respectively. We are a passionate team of talented developers who truly care about our mission and enjoy working deeply across the entire Temporal ecosystem to be a force multiplier across the organization.

Team Highlights

• Core observability tech stack: Clickhouse, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Thanos, Kubernetes, Temporal.
• Our recent observability project had the biggest impact to Temporal margins of any engineering effort in company history while also unlocking unprecedented operator capabilities.
• "Observability is the beating heart of our ability to deliver a mission critical service" -Preeti Somal, Executive VP of R&D.

What You'll Do

• Lead the end‑to‑end Software Development Lifecycle: goals & requirements solicitation, design & review, implementation, operationalization & deployment, support & maintenance.
• Lead feature design, review with stakeholders, iterate to incorporate feedback and drive consensus.
• Clearly document design choices and operational knowledge to successfully deploy and manage the software you develop.
• Provide appropriate test and production readiness coverage for unit, integration, and performance of your feature ownership area.

Own

• Set a high bar for technical excellence and take pride in the software you develop.
• Design and build multi‑component, distributed systems that operate at scale.
• Investigate issues with a methodical approach to identify a root cause.
• Understand performance and reliability implications of design options at scale. Make related tradeoffs.
• Participate in the team’s on‑call rotation.

Learn

• Expert‑level knowledge of architecture and services of assigned domain. Strong command over all aspects of the Temporal ecosystem. This role provides a strong opportunity for diverse technical exposure!
• Investigate and understand ways to best leverage Temporal's own software to power our mission.
• Deeply understand the needs of Temporal internal developers and external customers, and leverage that knowledge for product development and feature design.

Collaborate

• Lead and mentor fellow team members.
• Participate in design reviews and contribute to design of other features.
• Share design principles for building reliable systems at scale.

What You’ll Bring

• User‑first mindset. You’re excited by the opportunity to empower others through tooling, and enjoy deeply internalizing user goals and use cases to build effective solutions.
• Motivated by impact. You are driven by a desire to make positive things happen.
• Strong opinions about tools and technology that are equally balanced by a pragmatic drive for impact.
• Ability to work in a self‑directed manner in a fast‑paced environment.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills.

Skills & Technologies

• Demonstrated ability to develop horizontally scalable, resilient, and high performance distributed systems in a production environment.
• Experience designing, implementing, deploying, and supporting large scale, geographically distributed observability and/or high throughput data streaming/processing pipelines, or similar.
• Expert in one or more high‑level programming languages, preferably Go.
• Expert‑level Kubernetes skills.
• Expert‑level query development skills, preferably SQL.
• Hands‑on experience with one or more cloud providers, preferably AWS, or GCP.
• Thorough understanding of computer architecture, operating systems, and networking.
• Familiarity with best practices regarding monitoring, instrumenting, and configuring infrastructure.

Temporal Technologies is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Temporal Technologies does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non‑disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need. We embrace and celebrate differences and diversity.

Temporal is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. If you need to request a reasonable accommodation, please let your Recruiter know so we can assist.

Compensation Range: $169,600 - $278,250