Senior Observability Automation Engineer

Q2; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid Work Opportunities

Flexible Time Off

Health & Wellness Benefits

Career Development & Mentoring

Parental Leave

Volunteer & Philanthropy Programs

Employee Recognition Programs

Job summary

Q2 is seeking a Principal Engineer who will shape the technical direction, build high-impact tools, and accelerate company-wide delivery using AI. You will own end-to-end projects, socialize designs with leadership, and create scalable platforms that other engineers rely on across the organization.

You’ll lead ambiguous problems, frame requirements, and drive cross-team initiatives, ensuring secure, observable, and maintainable solutions at scale.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field.
• 8+ years of related experience in software or observability platforms.
• Fluent written and spoken English.
• Experience designing observability systems.
• Cloud infrastructure and DevOps experience.

Responsibilities

• Decide the problem to solve and set technical direction for the team.
• Build end-to-end solutions from concept to production.
• Use AI as a primary tool to accelerate delivery.
• Replace bottlenecks with secure, self-service tools.
• Multiply the org by creating reusable patterns and standards.
• Make designs legible to senior leaders and executives.
• Own what you ship, including on-call responsibilities.

Skills

Scale-building

Systems thinking

AI as accelerant

Force multiplication

Full-stack engineering

C# / Go / Python

RESTful APIs

Cloud & DevOps

Observability design

Linux scripting

Grafana/Splunk

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/IS

Tools

Grafana

Splunk

Job description

As passionate about our people as we are about our mission.

Why Join Q2?

Q2 is a leading provider of digital banking and lending solutions to banks, credit unions, alternative finance companies, and fintechs in the U.S. and internationally. Our mission is simple: build strong and diverse communities through innovative financial technology and we do that by empowering our people to help create success for our customers.

What Makes Q2 Special?

Being as passionate about our people as we are about our mission. We celebrate our employees in many ways through our year-round Q2 ChangeMakers awards program and global moments of recognition and connection. We invest in the growth and development of our team members through ongoing learning opportunities, internal mobility, and meaningful leadership relationships.

We also know that nothing builds trust and collaboration like having fun and giving back together. From company-wide volunteer days to events like our Q2 Homecoming Week-featuring learning, community service, and culture-building experiences-we create opportunities to connect, grow, and make an impact.

Why this role

Most engineering roles hand you a slice. A product owner sets the “what,” a manager sets the “how,” and you build your piece inside someone else’s sprint. This role starts one step earlier - before the problem even has a name.

We don’t build the product our customers log into. We build the tools that make the whole company faster, and the systems that catch a problem before a customer ever feels it. When what we build works, everyone ships and resolves faster. When it doesn’t, everyone feels it. At the Principal level, you own that leverage for the whole org: you decide what should exist, and you build it.

Here is how the work actually starts. Sometimes a friction point lands overnight and someone has to own it end to end by morning. More often, nobody has named the problem yet - and you are the one who sees it, frames it so the rest of us understand it, and sets the direction we build toward.

You dig into an ambiguous system until you understand it better than the people living inside it, then you reach for code, AI, and systems to remove or replace the bottleneck - not to optimize around it. What you ship did not exist before, scales across the company, and becomes something other engineers build on.

This is blue-water work. There is frequently no tool to configure, no vendor to call, and no best practice to copy - the thing does not exist yet, and your job is to invent it, then make it something the org can run without you. If your best year would be spent tuning one system a few percent faster, you will be bored here. If you’d rather build the thing that goes to Mars - and you’ve already been the person whose designs your org couldn’t ship fast enough - keep reading.

What You’ll Do

• Decide what should exist. Find the highest-leverage problem no one has scoped yet, frame it so engineers and executives both get it, and set the technical direction the team aligns to.
• Build it end to end. Whiteboard, prototype, architecture, production - you take ambiguous problems (sometimes the overnight fire-drill) all the way to something operable, and you can still go deep in code when it matters.
• Build with AI as a first-class tool. Extend our in-house, cloud-hosted agentic AI platform - including self-hosted models that already resolve a meaningful share of alerts with no human in the loop - and use it to make previously impractical problems tractable.
• Replace bottlenecks, don’t optimize them. Re-architect the risky, manual pathways people fight today into secure, self-service tools with the right guardrails and audit built in.
• Multiply the org. Create the platforms, patterns, and standards other engineers build on; decompose big problems and hand off well-scoped pieces; grow a bench of builders and hold the quality bar on work you didn’t write - so you’re free to go work the next hard thing.
• Make the work legible. Socialize designs with senior leaders, defend an architecture to a room of principals and to the exec team in the same afternoon, and keep plans and outcomes visible as you go - real influence, not death by process.
• Own what you ship. Including light, event-driven on-call for the things you build - not a rotation for systems you didn’t.

What Sets a Principal Apart Here

At this level, raw building is not the differentiator - with modern AI, strong engineers can produce in any stack. What separates a Principal is business translation and a company-scale mental map, plus the shift from out-building your peers to multiplying them. You find the problem no one has named, understand it more deeply than the people living it, turn “what’s I want” into “what’s you actually need,” and set a direction the org builds on. You’ve started making yourself replaceable on execution - because your time is worth more on the next unscoped problem. A great Senior out-builds the room; a Principal changes what the room can build.

What We’re Looking For

• A builder’s track record at scale. You’ve shipped tools and platforms others now depend on - things that didn’t exist before you built them, used well beyond your own team.
• Systems you can hold in your head. You reverse-engineer and understand complex, cross-team systems before you change them.
• AI as a build accelerant. Fluency with LLMs, agents, and self-hosted models, and the judgment to know where they create leverage and where they don’t.
• Force multiplication. You can name specific engineers you’ve made materially better, and patterns or platforms others now build on.
• Strong, general engineering ability. Full-stack and production-quality. We work primarily in C# and Go, with Python everywhere - we care that you can build, not that you’ve memorized our stack.Friction as opportunity. You can’t leave a normalized bottleneck alone.

Experience And Knowledge

• Typically requires a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field and a minimum of 8 years of related experience; or an advanced degree with 6+ years of experience; or equivalent related work experience
• Expertise in software development and system integration for observability platforms
• Advanced proficiency with monitoring frameworks and analytics tools
• Proficient in at least one of the following languages C# (preferred) / Go
• Able to consume and develop RESTful API web services
• Extensive experience in cloud infrastructure and DevOps toolchains
• Strong understanding of infrastructure as code and event-driven automation
• Proven track record designing observability systems in high-growth environments
• Ability to lead complex cross-team initiatives and deliver scalable results
• Experience with Linux and Windows scripting, including Bash/Perl/Python and PowerShell
• Experience with graphing and analytics tools (Grafana/Splunk)

This position requires fluent written and oral communication in English.

Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.

Health & Wellness

• Hybrid Work Opportunities
• Flexible Time Off
• Career Development & Mentoring Programs
• Health & Wellness Benefits, including competitive health insurance offerings and generous paid parental leave for eligible new parents
• Community Volunteering & Company Philanthropy Programs
• Employee Peer Recognition Programs - "You Earned it"

Our Culture & Commitment

We’re proud to foster a supportive, inclusive environment where career growth, collaboration, and wellness are prioritized. And our benefits go beyond healthcare-offering resources for physical, mental, and professional well-being.

Q2 employees are encouraged to give back through volunteer work and nonprofit support through our Spark Program (see more). We believe in making an impact in the industry and in the community.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, or veteran status.

Applicants in California or Washington State may not be exempt from federal and state overtime requirements