Senior Observability Engineer in London

Requirements

• Experience: 5-7+ years of hands-on experience in an Observability, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or DevOps role, with a proven track record of leading complex projects.
• Technical Leadership: Demonstrated experience in architecting and designing large-scale monitoring and observability solutions.
• Expert-Level Tooling: Deep expertise with modern observability platforms (e.g., Dynatrace, AWS Cloudwatch, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Splunk, OpenTelemetry).
• Cloud & Infrastructure: Advanced knowledge of major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible).
• Programming & Automation: Strong programming and scripting skills (e.g., Python, Go, Shell) with a focus on creating scalable automation and custom tooling.
• Problem-Solving: Exceptional analytical and strategic problem-solving skills, with the ability to lead through complex technical challenges.
• Data Analysis: Expertise in analysing and visualising telemetry data into meaningful information to drive actions.
• Hands-on: Demonstratable hands-on engineering and coding experience, ability to deep-dive into existing and emerging technologies to identify opportunities and solutions.
• Containerization and Orchestration: Understanding of container technologies (e.g., Docker) and container orchestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes) to monitor and manage containerized applications.
• Networking Knowledge: Understanding of networking principles and protocols to effectively monitor and troubleshoot network-related issues.
• Security Awareness: Awareness of security best practices and the ability to integrate security monitoring into observability processes.
• Communication & Influence: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, capable of articulating a technical vision to diverse audiences and influencing senior stakeholders. Ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams, convey findings, and discuss improvements with developers and operations teams.
• Continuous Learning: A commitment to continuous learning and staying updated on the latest trends in observability and monitoring.
• Education: Bachelor's degree in technology related field as well as 5+ years of relevant experience within the Observability field.
• (Desirable) Advanced Concepts: Proven experience with Chaos Engineering, AI-driven analytics, defining SLOs/SLIs, and advanced deployment strategies (Canary/Blue-Green).
• (Desirable) Software Engineering Foundation: Strong background in software engineering principles, database administration, and distributed systems architecture.
• (Desirable) Certifications: Relevant senior-level industry certifications (e.g., AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional, Certified Kubernetes Administrator).

What the job involves

• As a Senior Observability Engineer, you will be a driving force for technical excellence and strategic vision within our global team.
• You will be instrumental in architecting, building, and leading our comprehensive observability strategy to ensure the reliability, performance, and scalability of our critical IT systems.
• This senior role demands a passion for data-driven strategy, a commitment to automation, and the ability to mentor and lead.
• You will not only solve complex technical challenges but also influence the direction of observability practices across UMG globally, ensuring our technology landscape is as world-class as our music.
• Architecture & Strategy: Lead the architectural design and strategic roadmap for our observability stack. Drive the vision for world-class monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting solutions across our hybrid and cloud-native environments.
• Innovate & Automate: Spearhead the evaluation, selection, and implementation of cutting-edge observability tools and platforms (e.g., Dynatrace, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana). Architect and build robust, automated observability pipelines. Take an active part in documenting and defining processes and best practice.
• Optimize & Analyze: Conduct deep-dive analysis of telemetry data to proactively identify performance bottlenecks, optimize resource utilization, and guide capacity planning.
• Lead & Mentor: Act as a technical leader and mentor for the observability team and wider engineering groups. Champion and enforce best practices, fostering a culture of proactive and data-informed decision-making.
• Drive Incident & Problem Management: Work with Operations teams on high-priority incident resolution efforts, utilising deep analysis of telemetry data for swift root cause identification. Drive post-incident reviews and implement long-term solutions to enhance system resilience.
• Collaborate & Influence: Partner with Development, SRE, and Infrastructure leaders to embed observability into the entire technology lifecycle. Influence and drive the adoption of observability best practices across the global organization.
• Make UMG the place to be: Mentoring, managing and genuinely leading the Observability team in a way that attracts and retains the best talent. UMG is a place where everyone can bring themselves fully to work and thrive, as a Leader you are a key part of this.