Staff Software Engineer - Observability

Foundation Capital; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Cerebras Systems in Sunnyvale, CA is seeking a Software Engineer focused on Observability to build and evolve the systems that give us deep visibility into large-scale, performance-critical production systems. You’ll design and implement metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting infrastructure that enables fast debugging, high reliability, and confident operation of complex distributed systems.

This role sits at the intersection of platform engineering, distributed systems, and reliability.

Qualifications

• Proven backend or systems software development experience.
• Proficiency in Go, C++, Rust, Java, or Python.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, networking, and concurrency.
• Hands-on observability experience with metrics, logs, and traces.
• Familiarity with OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana and related tooling.
• Ability to design high-signal alerts and scalable telemetry pipelines.
• Experience debugging large-scale production systems is a plus.
• Hardware-aware observability in AI/ML or accelerator contexts is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement observability instrumentation across services and platforms.
• Build and maintain telemetry pipelines for metrics, logs, and traces at scale.
• Develop internal observability platforms, libraries, and tooling.
• Define and operationalize SLIs, SLOs, and alerting strategies.
• Partner with engineers to make systems debuggable by design.
• Reduce MTTR by enabling fast root-cause analysis during incidents.
• Create clear, actionable dashboards and alerts that reflect real system health.
• Balance telemetry signal vs cost, noise, and performance impact.
• Improve the developer experience around observability and debugging.

Skills

Backend & systems programming

Programming languages

Distributed systems

Networking fundamentals

Concurrency & performance

Observability tooling

Metrics, logs & tracing

Monitoring & alerting

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Grafana

Datadog/Elastic/Jaeger/Tempo

Service-level indicators & objectives

High-signal alerts

Telemetry pipelines

Developer platforms

Root-cause analysis

Education

Bachelor's degree in a relevant field

Tools

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Grafana

Datadog

Elastic

Jaeger

Tempo

Job description

Cerebras Systems builds the world's largest AI chip, 56 times larger than GPUs. This architecture allows Cerebras to deliver industry-leading training and inference speeds; over 10 times faster than GPU-based hyperscale cloud inference services.

This order of magnitude increase in speed is transforming the user experience of AI applications, unlocking real-time iteration and increasing intelligence via additional agentic computation.

Cerebras works with the leading model labs, global enterprises, and cutting-edge AI-native startups. OpenAI recently announced a multi-year partnership with Cerebras, to deploy 750 megawatts of scale, transforming key workloads with ultra high-speed inference.

About the team

The Cerebras Inference team’s mission is to deliver the world’s most performant, secure, and reliable enterprise-grade AI service. We build and operate large-scale distributed systems that power AI inference at unprecedented speed and efficiency. Join us to help scale inference and accelerate AI.

We’re looking for a Software Engineer focused on Observability to build and evolve the systems that give us deep visibility into large-scale, performance-critical production systems.

You’ll design and implement metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting infrastructure that enables fast debugging, high reliability, and confident operation of complex distributed systems. This role sits at the intersection of platform engineering, distributed systems, and reliability.

This is not a dashboards-only role - you’ll be writing production software, shaping internal platforms, and working closely with engineers across the stack.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement observability instrumentation across services and platforms
• Build and maintain telemetry pipelines for metrics, logs, and traces at scale
• Develop internal observability platforms, libraries, and tooling
• Define and operationalize SLIs, SLOs, and alerting strategies
• Partner with engineers to make systems debuggable by design
• Reduce MTTR by enabling fast root-cause analysis during incidents
• Create clear, actionable dashboards and alerts that reflect real system health
• Balance telemetry signal vs cost, noise, and performance impact
• Improve the developer experience around observability and debugging

Qualifications:

Core Engineering Skills

• Strong experience in backend or systems software engineering
• Proficiency in one or more of:
  • Go, C++, Rust, Java, Python
• Solid understanding of:
  • Distributed systems
  • Networking fundamentals
  • Concurrency and performance tradeoffs

Observability & Reliability Experience

• Hands-on experience with:
  • Metrics, logs, and distributed tracing
  • Production monitoring and alerting
• Familiarity with tools such as:
  • OpenTelemetry
  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Datadog / Elastic / Jaeger / Tempo (or similar)
• Experience designing:
  • High-signal alerts
  • Scalable telemetry pipelines
  • Service-level indicators and objectives

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in high-performance computing, AI/ML systems, or inference platforms
• Hardware-aware observability (accelerators, GPUs, custom hardware)
• Prior SRE or platform engineering background
• Experience debugging large-scale production incidents
• Building internal developer platforms or shared libraries

Why Join Cerebras

People who are serious about software make their own hardware. At Cerebras, we have built a breakthrough architecture that is unlocking new opportunities for the AI industry. With dozens of model releases and rapid growth, we’ve reached an inflection point in our business. Members of our team tell us there are five main reasons they joined Cerebras:

1. Build a breakthrough AI platform beyond the constraints of the GPU.
2. Publish and open source their cutting-edge AI research.
3. Work on one of the fastest AI supercomputers in the world.
4. Enjoy job stability with startup vitality.
5. Our simple, non-corporate work culture that respects individual beliefs.

Find out more about what it's like to work at Cerebras here!

Cerebras Systems is committed to creating an equal and diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate different backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We believe inclusive teams build better products and companies. We try every day to build a work environment that empowers people to do their best work through continuous learning, growth and support of those around them.

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