Associate Director, Technical Architecture

Merck; Rahway (NJ); Remote; USD 142,000 - 224,000; Full time

Job summary

Merck is seeking a Principal Engineer for Observability to lead the company-wide observability strategy, architect a unified, self-service platform, and champion a culture of operational excellence across product teams.

You will partner with SRE and engineering leaders to define, measure, and manage SLOs and leverage OpenTelemetry, Grafana, and multi-cloud telemetry to continuously improve reliability and performance.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in Observability, software engineering, SRE, or platform engineering with large-scale solutions.
• Subject matter expert on Observability practices and telemetry collection tooling (Grafana, Prometheus, Dynatrace, OpenTelemetry).
• Strategic leadership across teams to create and execute technical strategy.
• Hands-on knowledge of SRE principles, defining and managing SLOs and error budgets.
• Proficiency with OpenTelemetry for instrumentation and telemetry collection.
• Experience designing multi-cloud solutions (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Excellent communication to explain complex concepts to executives and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Create unified, long-term observability strategy for the company.
• Architect a cohesive, full-stack observability solution with self-service capabilities.
• Drive standardization and consolidation of tooling.
• Collaborate with SRE to define SLOs and error budgets.
• Educate and evangelize observability across IT and business domains.
• Mentor engineers on instrumentation, monitoring, and incident analysis.
• Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies.

Skills

Observability expertise

SRE principles

OpenTelemetry

Multi-cloud

Strategic leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Grafana

Prometheus

Dynatrace

OpenTelemetry

Job description

About the Role

We are seeking a visionary and influential technical leader to join as a Principal Engineer for Observability. In this role, you will be the chief architect and evangelist for our company-wide observability strategy. Your mission is to define and drive the adoption of a unified, full-stack observability framework that empowers our product teams to build and operate highly reliable, performant, and resilient services. This is not just a technical role; it is a strategic one. You will work across organizational boundaries, from engineering teams to senior leadership, to champion a culture of operational excellence. You will be responsible for rationalizing our tooling landscape, eliminating redundancy, and designing a cohesive, self-service observability platform that is easy to consume. If you are passionate about turning complex technical concepts into clear business value and leading large-scale change, this is your opportunity to make a lasting impact.

What You’ll Do

• Create Strategy: Create, document, and champion a unified, long-term observability strategy for the entire company, covering all telemetry types like metrics, traces, logs, profiles and more.
• Architect the Future: Design a cohesive, full-stack observability solution using best-in-class tools and practices. Ensure our architecture promotes a product-oriented approach with a strong focus on self-service capabilities.
• Drive Standardization and Consolidation: Actively identify and help decommission redundant or overlapping tools, driving the organization towards a standardized, cost-effective, and easy-to-manage observability service.
• Join forces with SRE team: Partner with Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team, promote their principles, such as defining, measuring, and managing Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and error budgets and how critical Observability for them.
• Evangelize and Educate: Clearly and persuasively communicate complex observability topics, benefits, and strategic decisions to senior leadership and stakeholders across IT and business domains.
• Lead by Influence: Act as the senior technical expert and thought leader in the observability space. Mentor engineers and guide teams in implementing best practices for instrumentation (OpenTelemetry), monitoring, and incident analysis using AIOps.
• Stay on the Cutting Edge: Continuously research industry trends, emerging technologies (like eBPF, OpenTelemetry), and best practices to ensure our observability strategy remains modern and effective.

Must-Have Skills & Experience

• Education- Bachelor's degree
• Extensive Technical Experience: 10+ years in Observability, software engineering, SRE, or platform engineering, with a proven track record of architecting and implementing large-scale technical solutions.
• Deep Observability Expertise: Subject matter expert on Observability practices and collection of all types of telemetry. SME for the tools that support them (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus, Dynatrace, BigPanda, xMatters or others).
• Strategic Leadership: Demonstrable experience creating and executing a technical strategy across multiple teams or an entire organization.
• SRE and SLO Mastery: Deep, practical knowledge of Site Reliability Engineering principles, with hands‑on experience defining, implementing, and managing SLOs and error budgets.
• OpenTelemetry Proficiency: Strong understanding and practical experience with the OpenTelemetry standard for instrumentation and telemetry collection.
• Multi-Cloud Experience: Experience designing solutions that operate across multiple cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Exceptional Communication & Influence: World-class ability to explain highly complex technical concepts to senior executives and non-technical audiences. Proven ability to lead by influence and drive consensus in a large organization.

Nice-to-Have Skills & Experience

• Tool Rationalization: Experience leading projects to consolidate tooling and migrate teams to a centralized platform.
• FinOps Knowledge: Understanding of cloud cost management principles and how they apply to observability data and tooling.
• eBPF Knowledge: Familiarity with eBPF for advanced, low-level system observability and performance analysis.
• Product Mindset: Experience thinking about internal platforms as products, with a focus on user experience, self-service, and clear documentation.

Why Join Us?

• Unmatched Impact: Define the technical direction for a critical capability across the entire company, directly influencing the reliability of all our products.
• Strategic Autonomy: Be the ultimate authority and thought leader in the observability domain with the freedom to shape our future.
• Executive Visibility: Work directly with senior leadership to connect deep technical initiatives with strategic business outcomes.
• Culture: Join a forward-thinking organization that invests in technical excellence and empowers its leaders to drive meaningful change.

Required Skills

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Technology, Cybersecurity, Emerging Technologies, Executive Visibility, FinOps Operating Model, Methods and Tools, Operational Excellence, Platform Engineering, Reliability Engineering, Requirements Management, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Solution Architecture, Stakeholder Engagement, Strategic Leadership, Strategic Planning, System Designs, Technical Advice, Telemetry

US And Puerto Rico Residents Only

Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities.

San Francisco Residents Only:

We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Los Angeles Residents Only:

We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance.

Employee Status

Regular

Relocation

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship

No

Travel Requirements

10%

Flexible Work Arrangements

Remote

Shift

1st - Day

Valid Driving License

No

Hazardous Material(s)

N/A

Job Posting End Date

09/21/2026

• A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.

Requisition ID: R403622

The salary range for this role is $142,400.00 - $224,100.00. This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs.

The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.