# Senior Software Engineer - Observe by Snowflake, OpenTelemetry

**Company:** [Snowflake](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/snowflake)
**Location:** Menlo Park, CA
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $200k – $288k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** OpenTelemetry, Go, Java, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, .Net, Otel Collector, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, GCP
**Posted:** 2026-05-08

> Develops OpenTelemetry Collector components, SDK libraries, and instrumentation for emerging domains like LLM/AI and Browser RUM. Collaborates with open-source community on contributions, RFCs, and standards while owning Observe Agent architecture. Requires 5+ years experience with strong Go skills and OTel ecosystem knowledge.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Pioneer new instrumentation capabilities in the OpenTelemetry community, defining and building next-generation telemetry collection for emerging domains including LLM/AI inference, Browser RUM, and mobile.
- Design and implement OTel Collector components (receivers, processors, exporters) and SDK instrumentation libraries that strengthen Observe's position as a leading OTel destination.
- Collaborate with the OpenTelemetry open-source community by contributing code, participating in SIG discussions, authoring RFCs, and reviewing pull requests to ensure high-quality contributions.
- Architect and own the Observe Agent — our OTel Collector distribution — including its extension points, pipeline architecture, and release strategy.
- Contribute to OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions, helping define standardized telemetry schemas for new and evolving technology domains.
- Work with product and field engineering teams to translate customer instrumentation challenges into upstream contributions and product features.
- Represent Snowflake/Observe in the OTel community — present at conferences, build relationships with maintainers at other vendors, and drive consensus on specification decisions.

## Requirements
- 5+ years of software engineering experience with meaningful involvement in the OpenTelemetry ecosystem (Collector, SDKs, or instrumentation libraries).
- Strong programming skills in **Go** (OTel Collector) and familiarity with at least one SDK language (**Java**, **Python**, **JavaScript/TypeScript**, or **.NET**).
- Deep understanding of OTel's architecture: the Collector pipeline model, SDK internals, context propagation, and the semantic conventions specification process.
- Experience contributing to open-source projects with multi-vendor governance — consensus-building, RFC authorship, and cross-organizational collaboration.
- Experience building cloud-native services and working with public cloud providers like **AWS**, **Azure**, or **GCP**.
- A passion for open-source software and community engagement, particularly in the observability and telemetry ecosystem.
- Strong opinions on instrumentation design: what makes telemetry useful vs. noisy, and how to balance coverage with performance overhead.

## Nice-to-Haves
- Approver or maintainer status in an OTel SIG (Collector, SDK, Semantic Conventions, or OpAMP).
- LLM/AI observability instrumentation — tracing inference chains, token usage, model performance metrics.
- Browser RUM or front-end performance instrumentation.
- Designing and shipping an OTel Collector distribution or Kubernetes operator.

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