DevOps Engineer (Observability)

Twilio Inc.; Ireland; Remote; EUR 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first culture

Ad-hoc in-person meetings

Job summary

Twilio is seeking a Software Engineer to join the Platform Observability team, driving a large-scale observability transformation. You will architect and implement telemetry workflows, data collection, and real-time analytics to support faster incident response and cost-efficient operations.

You will mentor engineers, guide architectural decisions across Platform Engineering and R&D, and help standardize telemetry practices using OpenTelemetry and modern data stacks.

Qualifications

• Proven expertise in building and scaling observability systems.
• Experience with centralized data lakes and telemetry tooling.
• Strong programming skills in at least one modern language (Go/Python/Java).
• Knowledge of AWS, Kubernetes, and IaC tools.
• Ability to lead architecture decisions across teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end architecture and delivery of observability platform components.
• Ensure logs, metrics, traces, and profiling are reliable and scalable.
• Mentor engineers and align cross-team efforts with long-term goals.
• Dive into high-cardinality telemetry and cost insights to optimize platform.
• Collaborate with product, SRE, and developer-experience teams on telemetry needs.
• Develop developer-friendly tooling and APIs for incident response and debugging.
• Leverage OpenTelemetry to ensure interoperability and extensibility.
• Champion pragmatic observability balancing performance and cost.

Skills

Observability systems

OpenTelemetry

Programming (Go)

Programming (Python)

Programming (Java)

AWS

Kubernetes

Data pipelines

Distributed systems

Tools

Prometheus

ClickHouse

OpenTelemetry

Grafana

Job description

Who we are At Twilio, we’re shaping the future of communications, all from the comfort of our homes. We deliver innovative solutions to hundreds of thousands of businesses and empower millions of developers worldwide to craft personalized customer experiences. Our dedication to remote-first work, and strong culture of connection and global inclusion means that no matter your location, you’re part of a vibrant team with diverse experiences making a global impact each day. As we continue to revolutionize how the world interacts, we’re acquiring new skills and experiences that make work feel truly rewarding. Your career at Twilio is in your hands.. Hiring and how we work We use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help make our hiring process efficient. That said, every hiring decision is made by real Twilions! Also, while we are a remote-first company, you may be asked to report in person on an ad-hoc basis for team gatherings, functional off-sites or customer meetings. . See yourself at Twilio Join the team as our next Software Engineer on Twilio’s platform engineering observability team.

About the job

This position is needed to help our platform engineering observability team. Twilio is undergoing a large-scale observability transformation—and you can help shape the foundation. Observability is a strategic pillar and a key enabler for faster incident response, deeper customer-centric insights, and more cost-effective platform operations. As a Software Engineer on the Platform Observability team, you’ll play a critical role in re-architecting how telemetry flows and is utilized through Twilio—making it structured, accessible, affordable, and actionable. Over the next 3 years, Twilio is rebuilding nearly every component of our observability platform, from data collection to real-time analytics. You will drive core initiatives that shift Twilio from fragmented tooling and wasteful data sprawl to a unified, OpenTelemetry-first observability stack built for scale. You’ll lead technically and strategically—designing platform components, influencing org-wide architectural decisions, mentoring engineers, and engaging directly with teams across Platform Engineering and R&D.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end architecture and delivery of key observability platform components, with a focus on reliability, scalability, and usability.
• Drive consistency and quality across all observability signals—logs, metrics, traces, and continuous profiling—building intuitive workflows for engineers.
• Serve as a technical advisor and mentor across the platform org, guiding design decisions and aligning cross-team efforts with long-term architectural goals.
• Go deep in one or more problem areas (e.g., high-cardinality telemetry, distributed tracing correlation, compute cost insights), while ensuring the platform scales horizontally.
• Collaborate with product teams, SREs, and developer experience groups to deeply understand telemetry needs and integrate observability into core engineering workflows.
• Design and build developer-friendly tooling and APIs to support incident response, performance analysis, and platform debugging at scale.
• Leverage (and optionally contribute to) open-source standards like OpenTelemetry to ensure interoperability and extensibility.
• Champion a pragmatic approach to observability—balancing performance, cost, and user value across diverse engineering teams.

Qualifications

• *Required: Proven expertise in building and scaling observability systems (e.g., logging platforms, metrics pipelines, tracing infrastructure, or profiling tools).
• Lead technical execution for major components of Twilio’s observability overhaul, including our shift to centralized S3-based data lakes, OpenTelemetry instrumentation, and ClickHouse-backed query engines.
• Proficiency in at least one modern programming language (e.g., Go, Python, Java).
• Familiarity with high-cardinality data challenges and telemetry correlation techniques.
• Experience designing high-scale telemetry systems (e.g., Prometheus, ClickHouse, OpenTelemetry, Kafka, or equivalent).
• Solid understanding of distributed systems and the challenges of observability in complex, microservice-based environments.
• Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, and infrastructure-as-code tools.
• Provide architectural guidance and thought leadership across teams, helping to establish clear telemetry standards, efficient usage patterns, and scalable platform abstractions.
• Ability to make forward-looking technical decisions and lead others through ambiguity and chan
• *Desired: Familiarity with ClickHouse, Grafana Mimir, Athena, or equivalent systems for log and…