Staff Software Engineer - Observability

Intuit, Inc.; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 203,000 - 274,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Cash bonus

Equity rewards

Benefits

Job summary

Intuit, Inc. is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to lead high-scale logging and observability platforms. You will own architecture for the One Intuit Logging system, spanning edge generation to storage, while driving cost optimization and cloud-native delivery across AWS and GCP.

You will mentor engineers, design core components, and collaborate with SRE and product teams to ensure reliability and performance at scale in a hybrid cloud environment.

Qualifications

• 8-10+ years in software engineering with large-scale, distributed systems.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field.
• Deep experience with high-throughput data pipelines and observability.
• Strong Kubernetes, container workloads, sidecar/daemonset experience.
• Proficient in Go, Java, Python or similar languages for infra engineering.
• Ability to lead architecture for mission-critical, high-availability systems.
• Experience cost-optimizing large-scale infrastructure.
• Excellent communication for engineering and leadership audiences.

Responsibilities

• Architect and evolve the One Intuit Logging system end-to-end.
• Own pipeline and cost optimization across the logging stack.
• Lead design of core logging components (FELS, Kinesis/CloudWatch, Log Writer).
• Drive automation revamp and modernize legacy tooling.
• Design and maintain edge/collection agents and Kubernetes metadata enrichment.
• Extend onboarding plugin to streamline developer onboarding.
• Leverage MCP Server for AI-assisted tooling across the observability platform.
• Build dashboards, metrics, and alerts for pipeline health and cost.
• Collaborate with SRE, platform, and product teams for alignment.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across the team.
• Partner with governance efforts to enforce ingestion quality and guardrails.

Skills

Kubernetes

Go

Java

Python

Cloud platforms

Leadership

Communication

System design

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related

Tools

AWS

Kinesis

S3

CloudWatch

EC2

Splunk

Fluent Bit

Job description

Intuit is a leading software provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, consumers, financial institutions and accounting professionals. You probably know us by our flagship products, QuickBooks®, Quicken® and TurboTax®, but that's just the start. We're taking on exciting challenges, such as SaaS and mobile applications. Over 50 million users, seven million small businesses and 1,600 financial institutions depend on Intuit because we innovate at the crossroads of real customer problems and breakthrough technology. Join us and let your ingenious ideas be heard.

Interested in creating and leading the platforms that are high scale and mission critical? Want to solve large scale and highly availability platform challenges for on premise and public cloud deployments? Intuit is seeking a Staff Software Engineer, who is characterized by progressive technical experience and has demonstrated progression in technical prowess, to join PDX Observability Engineering team.

The Staff Software Engineer will join the Core PDX Observability Engineering team at Intuit to design and deliver the next-generation logging and observability platform. This role focuses on creating and leading high-scale, mission-critical pipelines and solving large-scale, high-availability challenges across on-premise and public cloud (AWS, GCP) deployments. You will own the architecture and evolution of Intuit's One Logging system — spanning ingestion, routing, cost optimization, and MCP Server-driven automation — building platform capabilities that maximize velocity for thousands of Intuit developers.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and evolve the One Intuit Logging system end-to-end from log generation at the edge through ingestion, routing, and storage.

• Own and drive pipeline and cost optimization initiatives across the logging stack, reducing ingestion volume and infrastructure spend without losing signal fidelity.

• Lead design and development of core logging components: Front End Logging Service (FELS), S3 Log Writer, Kinesis/CloudWatch Log Writer, Log Router, Asterias Splunk, GCP Logs Processor, Index Controller, and Asset-to-Log DB.

• Drive the Automation Revamp/Rewrite initiative, modernizing legacy tooling into scalable, maintainable services.

• Design and maintain edge/collection agents — Fluent Bit DaemonSet, OIL sidecar (Fluent Bit), EC2 Logger Agent — and integrate Kubernetes metadata enrichment into the pipeline.

• Build and extend the FELS Onboarding Plugin to streamline developer onboarding to the logging platform.

• Leverage MCP Server capabilities to enable AI-assisted authoring, automation, and operational tooling across the observability platform.

• Build observability into the platform itself — Grafana dashboards, metrics, and alerting for pipeline health, throughput, and cost.

• Partner with platform governance efforts (e.g., SplunkCraft) to enforce ingestion quality, policy, and guardrails upstream in the pipeline.

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship, setting engineering standards and design direction across the team.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with SRE, platform, and product engineering teams to align logging platform capabilities with organization-wide needs.

Qualifications

• 8-10+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems, logging/data pipelines, or observability platforms.

• Bachelor's degree (BE/BTech/MS/MTech) in Computer Science or related field required.

• Deep expertise in building and operating high-throughput data pipelines (log/event ingestion, streaming, routing) at multi-TB/PB daily scale.

• Strong hands-on experience with Kubernetes, containerized workloads, and sidecar/daemonset architectures (e.g., Fluent Bit).

• Proficiency with public cloud platforms (AWS — S3, Kinesis, CloudWatch, EC2; GCP — logging/monitoring services).

• Experience with Splunk or equivalent log management/observability platforms at scale.

• Strong programming skills in Go, Java, Python, or similar languages used in infrastructure/platform engineering.

• Demonstrated ability to lead architecture and design for mission-critical, high-availability systems.

• Experience driving cost-optimization initiatives for large-scale infrastructure.

• Strong track record of technical leadership, mentorship, and cross-team influence without direct reporting authority.

• Excellent communication skills — able to translate complex technical tradeoffs for both engineering and leadership audiences.

Intuit provides a competitive compensation package with a strong pay for performance rewards approach. This position may be eligible for a cash bonus, equity rewards and benefits, in accordance with our applicable plans and programs (see more about our compensation and benefits at Intuit®: Careers | Benefits). Pay offered is based on factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and work location. To drive ongoing fair pay for employees, Intuit conducts regular comparisons across categories of ethnicity and gender. The expected base pay range for this position is:

Southern, CA: $188,500 - $255,000

The expected base pay range for this position is:

Mountain View, CA $202,500- $274,000