Role Description – Observability Engineer (OpenTelemetry, eBPF, Java) Engagement overview We are looking for a senior engineer to move workloads from a commercial APM solution to vendor-neutral OpenTelemetry instrumentation with Grafana Cloud as the backend.
Detail Location Austria
Remote, with occasional on-site presence in Austria
Residence Within the EU
Languages German and/or English: business fluent, min. B2
Seniority Min. 5 years of professional experience in platform engineering, including proven hands-on experience with tracing or APM instrumentation
Project start ASAP
Duration Short- or long-term engagement possible
The role The project modernises observability for a large, heterogeneous enterprise landscape: container platforms, virtual machines and integration middleware. The focus is on OpenTelemetry, eBPF-based auto-instrumentation and a GitOps-driven rollout. The role can be filled in one of two orientations.
Focus:
Run instrumentation reliably and at scale on container platforms and Linux hosts.
Responsibilities
Design and operate telemetry pipelines (collectors, gateways) to Grafana Cloud / Tempo
Deploy instrumentation based on Open Telemetry and eBPF
Automate rollouts across environments with GitOps
Requirements
Application Server:
working knowledge of common Java application servers and their start mechanisms, e.g. JBoss, Tomcat
JDK 8/11:
solid understanding of Java agents and JVM startup options
Grafana:
expert in Grafana Cloud, Tempo, Alloy, Beyla
OpenTelemetry:
expert in Collector, Operator and context propagation
eBPF:
hands-on with eBPF-based instrumentation (e.g. Grafana Beyla), including Linux capabilities and security settings
OpenShift:
deep knowledge of the OpenShift security model and operators
GitOps:
CI/CD and configuration management
Profile B – Java Specialist (OpenTelemetry & eBPF) Focus:
Get deep, meaningful telemetry out of applications where auto-instrumentation is not enough.
Responsibilities
Assess applications for compatibility with the available instrumentation options
Develop OpenTelemetry agent extensions and custom instrumentation
Ensure end-to-end trace context across synchronous and asynchronous communication
Provide reusable instrumentation templates for application teams
Requirements
Application Server:
expert in Tomcat, WildFly, WebLogic and integration middleware
JDK:
expert across Java versions 8/11, including bytecode instrumentation
Grafana:
solid in Tempo, dashboards and profiling
OpenTelemetry:
expert in the Java agent, SDK, extensions and manual instrumentation (Java, .NET a plus)
eBPF:
good understanding of the strengths and limits of eBPF compared to in-process agents
OpenShift:
working knowledge of deploying and instrumenting workloads
GitOps:
working knowledge of Argo CD and CI/CD pipelines
Common requirements
Production experience with OpenTelemetry and Grafana at large scale
Judgment to choose the right instrumentation approach per application
Experience with performance and overhead testing
Nice to have: migration from a commercial APM solution to OpenTelemetry
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