Application Monitoring Engineer

D2 Consulting; Springfield (VA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 175,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health/Dental/Vision

401(k) match

Paid time off

Job summary

D2 Technical Services is seeking a Senior Application Monitoring Engineer to own the observability strategy for critical business applications. You will design monitoring architectures, drive down MTTR, and mentor engineers on best practices.

Responsibilities include building end-to-end monitoring, setting SLIs/SLOs, and leading incident response with distributed tracing across microservices. Strong collaboration with DevOps and product teams is required.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in application monitoring, observability, or SRE.
• Hands-on expertise in at least one major APM platform (Datadog, New Relic, or Dynatrace).
• Experience configuring alerts and thresholds.
• Understanding distributed systems and microservices.
• Experience with scripting (Python, Bash) to automate monitoring.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP) and containers (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Exposure to tools like Splunk, ELK, Grafana, or Prometheus.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain end-to-end application performance monitoring.
• Define SLIs, SLOs, and alerting dashboards to surface meaningful signals.
• Lead triage and root-cause analysis during incidents.
• Improve observability stack and reduce alert fatigue.
• Mentor engineers to integrate monitoring from the start.
• Collaborate with DevOps/SRE and development teams on deployments.

Skills

Observability

Incident response

Mission critical systems

Proactive thinking

Tools

Datadog

New Relic

Dynatrace

Splunk

ELK

Grafana

Prometheus

Job description

• ACTIVE TS/SCI SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED**

• ACTIVE TS/SCI SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED**

We're looking for a Senior Application Monitoring Engineer to own and evolve our application observability strategy. You'll be the go-to expert for keeping critical business applications visible, healthy, and performant — designing monitoring architecture, driving down mean time to detection and resolution, and mentoring other engineers on observability best practices. This is a largely autonomous role for someone who thinks proactively about failure modes and treats monitoring as a product, not an afterthought.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and maintain end-to-end application performance monitoring using platforms like Dynatrace, instrumenting applications and services so that the right signals surface before customers notice a problem
• Define and maintain SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets in partnership with engineering and product teams, and build dashboards and alerting that reduce noise while catching what actually matters
• When incidents happen, you'll lead or support triage and root-cause analysis, using distributed tracing and APM data to pinpoint issues across complex, distributed systems.
• Drive continuous improvement of the observability stack itself — evaluating new tools, refining alert thresholds, and reducing alert fatigue across the engineering organization
• Serve as a technical mentor, helping other engineers build monitoring into their own services from the start rather than bolting it on later
• Partner closely with DevOps/SRE, infrastructure, and application development teams to make sure monitoring coverage keeps pace with new deployments and architectural changes

What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in application monitoring, observability, or site reliability engineering, with hands‑on expertise in at least one major APM platform (Datadog, New Relic, or Dynatrace) — deep familiarity with more than one is a strong plus
• Experience configuring alerts and adjusting thresholds
• Solid grasp of distributed systems, microservices architecture, and how to trace a request across services, containers, and cloud infrastructure
• Experience with scripting or programming (Python, Bash, or similar) to automate monitoring configuration and build custom integrations
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes) is expected
• Understanding of the fundamentals of APIs, databases, and networking well enough to diagnose issues across the full stack
• You’ve participated in on‑call rotations and incident response processes, and ideally have exposure to complementary tools like Splunk, ELK, Grafana, or Prometheus
• Communicate clearly under pressure, can explain a complex incident to both engineers and non‑technical stakeholders, and take genuine ownership of the systems you monitor

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform, CloudFormation, etc.) is a plus
• Relevant certifications (Datadog, New Relic, AWS/Azure/GCP)

Additional Information

• All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.
• Compensation is unique to each candidate and relative to the skills and experience they bring to the position. The salary range for this position is typically $150-175k. This does not guarantee a specific salary as compensation is based upon multiple factors such as education, experience, certifications, and other requirements, and may fall outside of the above‑stated range.
• Highlights of our benefits include Health/Dental/Vision, 401(k) match, Accrued PTO, STD/LTD/Life Insurance, Referral Bonuses, professional development reimbursement, and more!

D2 Technical Services is committed to a merit‑based recruitment process and encourages applications from all qualified individuals. As a Veteran‑Owned Small Business, we particularly welcome applications from veterans who have the requisite skills and experience. Job applicants that are interested in one of our openings and may require a reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, should contact us to request an accommodation.