Principal Architect - Logging & Observability

Experian is a global data and technology company, powering opportunities for people and businesses around the world. We help to redefine lending practices, uncover and prevent fraud, simplify healthcare, create marketing solutions, and gain deeper insights into the automotive market, all using our unique combination of data, analytics and software. We also assist millions of people to accomplish their financial goals and help them save time and money.

We operate across a range of markets, from financial services to healthcare, automotive, agribusiness, insurance, and many more industry segments.

We invest in people and new advanced technologies to unlock the power of data. As a FTSE 100 Index company listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN), we have a team of 22,500 people across 32 countries. Our corporate headquarters are in Dublin, Ireland. Learn more at experianplc.com.

We are looking for a Principal Architect – Logging & Observability. You will lead the design, strategy, and implementation of enterprise-scale observability capabilities. These capabilities will span Experian's hybrid infrastructure, cloud platforms, and global product ecosystem.

You will define and lead modern observability architecture across logs, metrics, events, traces, and telemetry pipelines. You will bring deep hands-on expertise in Open Telemetry, distributed tracing, instrumentation standards, telemetry collection, and observability platform engineering.

You have understanding of Open Telemetry is important. The interviewer will ask you to have practical experience designing and implementing Open Telemetry-based instrumentation across microservices, APIs, applications, and infrastructure. This instrumentation should include trace propagation, semantic conventions, collectors, exporters, and sampling strategies. Additionally, you have experience with integration into platforms such as Splunk, Dynatrace, Cribl, Prometheus, Grafana, or Datadog.

Main Responsibilities:

• Define and lead the enterprise observability architecture across logs, metrics, traces, events, and telemetry pipelines.
• Establish OpenTelemetry as a core observability standard across applications, services, APIs, and infrastructure.
• Design and implement distributed tracing patterns using OpenTelemetry, including context propagation, trace correlation, sampling, and service dependency mapping.
• Build reusable instrumentation standards, libraries, SDKs, and reference implementations for engineering teams.
• Improve adoption of Observability as Code, using tools such as Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, and automation frameworks.
• Design scalable telemetry ingestion, processing, routing, enrichment, and cost-optimization strategies.
• Integrate OpenTelemetry with enterprise observability platforms such as Splunk, Dynatrace, Cribl, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, and related tools.
• Create self-service onboarding patterns, APIs, and automation to help product and platform teams adopt observability.
• Partner with SRE, DevOps, platform engineering, product engineering, cloud, security, and operations teams to define observability standards and guardrails.
• Establish Measurements, governance models, best practices, and architectural patterns for enterprise observability.
• Evaluate current and latest observability technologies and guide the roadmap for tooling modernization.
• You will report to Director.

Summary:

This is a senior architecture role for someone who can lead the modernization of observability across the enterprise. You will not only understand observability tools but will define standards, build reusable frameworks, automate adoption, and make OpenTelemetry a foundational capability across the organization.

Qualifications

Required Experience:

• 10–15+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, SRE, DevOps, cloud infrastructure, or observability architecture.
• We require hands-on experience with OpenTelemetry.
• 5+ years of experience implementing distributed tracing, metrics, logs, and telemetry pipelines at scale.
• 5+ years of experience with OpenTelemetry components, including SDKs, Collector, exporters, processors, semantic conventions, and instrumentation libraries.
• Experience with observability tools such as Dynatrace, Splunk, Cribl, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or similar platforms.
• Coding experience in Python, Go, Java, or similar languages.
• 5+ years of experience with infrastructure as code and automation tools such as Terraform, Ansible, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or similar CI/CD platforms.
• Experience with cloud-native architecture, microservices, Kubernetes, APIs, and hybrid cloud environments.
• Define enterprise standards, engineering teams, and increase adoption across large, distributed organizations.
• 5+ years of experience building internal observability platforms or telemetry frameworks.
• Experience with OpenTelemetry Collector deployment patterns in Kubernetes, cloud, and hybrid environments.
• Knowledge of trace-based alerting, service-level goals, RED/USE metrics, and reliability engineering practices.
• 5+ years of experience optimizing observability cost, data volume, retention, sampling, and routing strategies.
• Familiarity with security, compliance, and governance requirements related to telemetry data.

Additional information

Our uniqueness is that we truly celebrate yours. Experian's culture and people are important differentiators. We take our people agenda very seriously and focus on what truly matters; DEI, work/life balance, development, authenticity, engagement, collaboration, wellness, reward & recognition, volunteering... the list goes on. Experian's strong people first approach is award winning; Great Place To Work™ in 24 countries, FORTUNE Best Companies to work and Glassdoor Best Places to Work (globally 4.4 Stars) to name a few. Check out Experian Life on social or our Careers Site to understand why.

Experian is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. Innovation is a critical part of Experian's DNA and practices, and our diverse workforce drives our success. Everyone can succeed at Experian and bring their whole self to work, irrespective of their gender, ethnicity, religion, color, sexuality, physical ability or age. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know at the earliest opportunity.

Experian Careers - Creating a better tomorrow together

Benefits

Experian care for employee's work life balance, health, safety and wellbeing. In support of this endeavor, we offer best-in-class family well-being benefits, enhanced medical benefits and paid time off.

#LI-Hybrid

This is a hybrid role.

Experian Careers - Creating a better tomorrow together

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