Senior Software Engineer, Observability

About the team

Are you passionate about building and evolving large-scale observability platforms? Do you want to work on a system that processes terabytes of data daily and supports hundreds of millions of active series? Are you excited about using AI to change how engineers build, operate, and debug systems at scale? If so, this role is for you!

The Observability team is part of Roku's Cloud Technology Infrastructure organization. We ensure the services and workloads running on our platform have robust observability. We are a high-performing, fast-moving international team that thrives on taking ownership, communicating effectively, and iterating quickly to deliver impactful engineering solutions.

Our mission is to advance Roku's observability platform, which ingests terabytes of data daily and manages hundreds of millions of active series. We don't just deploy off-the-shelf tools: we use Go and Rust to build our own world-class metrics stack on top of open-source technologies, and we tailor it to Roku's scale and needs. We work closely with the Cloud Platform team to support Roku's shift toward a unified, cloud-agnostic infrastructure where every team benefits from a common framework with out-of-the-box features. Together, we build and scale both the foundational infrastructure (Kubernetes, Istio, Envoy, operators, and more) and the observability layer (built on OSS/CNCF-supported observability projects).

AI is part of how we work. We use AI tools and agents throughout our engineering lifecycle: to design, write, review, and test code; automate operational work; and speed up troubleshooting and incident response. We continuously refine these workflows as a team. We bring the same mindset to the platform, where we provide AI-assisted capabilities to the engineers who rely on our observability stack.

What sets us apart is our results-driven culture rooted in ownership, accountability, and fast iteration. We prioritize solving meaningful engineering problems over process for process's sake, and focus our time and energy on high-impact work. Collaboration and open communication are core to how we operate. We share ideas freely and make decisions with purpose. We're continuously improving, not just the systems we build, but how we grow and work as a team.

About the role

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Observability team, you'll help design, develop, and scale the platform used across Roku engineering teams to alert and monitor thousands of services. You'll write Go and Rust to build and evolve our own metrics stack on top of open-source technologies, and you'll work hands-on with tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Thanos, Loki, Tempo, and OpenTelemetry, optimizing them for performance, reliability, and usability. AI is central to how you'll work: you'll use AI tools and agents daily to build, test, and operate our systems, and help the team keep improving how we engineer with AI. You'll collaborate with infrastructure and platform teams, automate deployment and configuration, and contribute improvements back to the open-source community. This role is ideal for an engineer who's passionate about systems programming, observability at scale, and AI-driven engineering.

For California Only - The estimated annual salary for this position is between $251,000 - $403,750 annually. Compensation packages are based on factors unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, certifications, and specific geographical location. This role is eligible for health insurance, equity awards, life insurance, disability benefits, parental leave, wellness benefits, and paid time off.

For Illinois Only - The estimated annual salary for this position is between $220,900 - $325,200 annually. Compensation packages are based on factors unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, certifications, and specific geographical location. This role is eligible for health insurance, equity awards, life insurance, disability benefits, parental leave, wellness benefits, and paid time off.

For New York Only - The estimated annual salary for this position is between $268,950 - $403,750 annually. Compensation packages are based on factors unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, certifications, and specific geographical location. This role is eligible for health insurance, equity awards, life insurance, disability benefits, parental leave, wellness benefits, and paid time off.

What you'll be doing

• Building Our Metrics Stack: Design and build high-performance components of our metrics stack in Go and Rust, on top of open-source technologies, to handle terabytes of data daily and hundreds of millions of active series.
• AI-Driven Engineering: Use AI tools and agents as part of your daily development and operations work (writing, reviewing, and testing code, automating operational tasks, and accelerating troubleshooting and incident response), and help shape how the team works with AI.
• Scaling and Innovating: Enhance and optimize Roku's observability stack while introducing Roku-specific features and innovations, including AI-assisted capabilities for the engineers who use the platform.
• Tooling and Standardization: Work with the Platform team to identify, standardize, and improve observability tools as part of a cohesive solution.
• Stability and Performance: Invest in making the observability platform more stable, performant, and reliable for all users.
• Automation and Usability: Build automation around observability tools to simplify onboarding for developers (dashboards, alerts, traces, etc.).
• Open Source Contributions: Contribute new open-source tools and improvements back to the CNCF ecosystem.
• Collaboration and Engagement: Partner with engineering teams to build solutions that deliver a better out-of-the-box experience and drive innovation.
• Technical Leadership: Lead design discussions, mentor engineers and interns, and help shape the platform's technical direction.

We're excited if you have

• Significant experience (typically around 8 years) in Infrastructure Engineering and/or DevOps, with a focus on observability platforms.
• AI-Driven Engineering: Hands-on experience using AI tools and agents in your day-to-day development and operations work, and practical experience building with Large Language Models (for example, tool/function calling, agents, MCP, RAG, and evaluating LLM output).
• Solid programming experience (typically around 4 years) in Go and/or Rust. Experience with performance-sensitive systems is a strong plus. If you're strong in one, we welcome your interest in growing in the other.
• Large-Scale Expertise: Proven experience designing and operating observability platforms that process massive amounts of data (metrics, logs, and traces) to provide actionable insights.
• Expertise in deploying, operating, and extending open-source observability tools at scale, such as Prometheus, Grafana, Thanos, Loki, Tempo, or similar solutions like Cortex, Mimir, or the ELK stack.
• Familiarity with open standards such as OpenTelemetry and OpenMetrics.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes and Istio architectures, and the ability to contribute improvements for scalability and integration.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, GCP, and/or Azure.
• Strong ability to engage with customers and stakeholders to deliver tailored observability solutions.
• Education: B.S. or M.S. degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.

Even if you don't match every point listed, we'd love to hear from you if you have the drive to dive in, learn, and make an impact.