Job Title: Principal Observability Architect
Job Summary
We are seeking a forward-thinking Monitoring & Observability Strategy & Transformation Lead to provide enterprise technical thought leadership and strategic direction for the evolution of our Monitoring & Observability capabilities.
This role will define the enterprise Monitoring & Observability strategy, establish the future-state vision and roadmap, and lead transformation initiatives that improve technology visibility, reliability, operational efficiency, and service quality.
The successful candidate will bring deep expertise in Monitoring & Observability combined with broad knowledge of infrastructure, cloud, applications, automation, IT operations, and emerging technologies. This role will influence technology strategy across the organization, establish enterprise standards and capabilities, evaluate emerging technologies, and translate innovation into practical, scalable solutions.
The position is technology- and platform-agnostic and is focused on the capabilities and outcomes of enterprise observability rather than ownership of any individual monitoring product.
Key Responsibilities
Monitoring & Observability Strategy & Thought Leadership
- Serve as the enterprise technical thought leader for Monitoring & Observability.
- Define enterprise vision, strategy, target-state architecture, roadmap, and transformation priorities.
- Establish standards and principles for metrics, logs, traces, events, synthetics, application performance, infrastructure, network, database, and end-user observability.
- Drive the evolution from traditional monitoring and alerting toward full-stack observability and operational intelligence.
- Evangelize modern observability practices across infrastructure, application, cloud, security, and operations organizations.
Transformation & Modernization
- Lead enterprise Monitoring & Observability transformation initiatives, including modernization, platform consolidation, tool rationalization, integration, automation, and adoption of emerging capabilities.
- Develop and execute multi-year transformation roadmaps with measurable business and operational outcomes.
- Identify opportunities to improve monitoring coverage, signal quality, operational efficiency, reliability, and cost.
- Establish strategies for transitioning legacy monitoring capabilities to modern observability solutions.
- Lead technology evaluations, proofs of concept, and strategic platform decisions.
Observability Engineering & Enablement
- Establish an Observability Engineering and Enablement capability focused on standards, reusable patterns, automation, and self-service.
- Define scalable approaches for onboarding applications, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and services.
- Promote Observability as Code, Infrastructure as Code, APIs, CI/CD, and automation.
- Establish enterprise standards for monitoring configuration, telemetry quality, alerting, dashboards, data retention, and lifecycle management.
- Partner with engineering teams to embed observability into application and infrastructure delivery processes.
Event Intelligence, AIOps & Automation
- Define the strategy for intelligent event management, including filtering, deduplication, enrichment, correlation, prioritization, and anomaly detection.
- Evaluate and apply AI/AIOps capabilities to improve operational intelligence and efficiency.
- Identify opportunities for predictive analytics, automated incident response, and automated remediation.
- Drive the transition from reactive monitoring toward proactive, predictive, and increasingly automated operations.
- Establish appropriate governance and human oversight for AI-enabled operations.
Reliability & Service Health
- Apply SRE and reliability engineering principles to Monitoring & Observability.
- Define approaches for SLIs, SLOs, service health indicators, and reliability metrics.
- Establish end-to-end visibility across applications, infrastructure, cloud, networks, databases, and service dependencies.
- Use observability data to improve availability, performance, incident response, problem management, and continuous service improvement.
Enterprise Integration
- Define integration between Monitoring & Observability and CMDB, ITSM, service mapping, incident management, configuration management, and automation.
- Leverage service and configuration context to improve event correlation, impact analysis, incident assignment, and root-cause analysis.
- Help establish operational telemetry as a trusted source of information for technology operations and service management.
Technology & Industry Leadership
- Maintain awareness of emerging observability, AI, automation, cloud, and reliability technologies.
- Evaluate industry trends and determine where emerging capabilities can provide meaningful enterprise value.
- Lead vendor evaluations and strategic technology decisions while maintaining a platform-agnostic perspective.
- Establish technology standards and reference patterns that support long-term enterprise strategy.
Executive & Organizational Leadership
- Develop executive-level strategies, roadmaps, business cases, and transformation recommendations.
- Influence technology direction across organizational boundaries and build alignment among technical and business stakeholders.
- Lead complex transformation initiatives involving multiple technology organizations and strategic partners.
- Mentor architects, engineers, and technical leaders and promote a culture of innovation, automation, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement.
Skills & Qualifications
Monitoring & Observability
- Deep expertise in enterprise Monitoring & Observability strategy, architecture, engineering, and operations.
- Strong understanding of metrics, logs, traces, events, synthetics, APM, infrastructure monitoring, network monitoring, database monitoring, and end-user experience monitoring.
- Experience defining enterprise observability strategies, standards, operating models, and roadmaps.
- Experience with major observability platforms and technologies such as Datadog, Splunk, Dynatrace, New Relic, Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, Zabbix, SolarWinds, or equivalent.
Transformation & Strategy
- Demonstrated experience leading enterprise technology transformation initiatives.
- Ability to develop technology strategies, future-state visions, roadmaps, standards, and governance frameworks.
- Proven ability to translate technical capabilities into measurable business and operational outcomes.
- Experience driving organizational adoption and change across multiple technology teams.
AIOps, Automation & Reliability
- Strong understanding of event management, event correlation, noise reduction, anomaly detection, and operational analytics.
- Experience with AIOps, AI-enabled operations, or automated remediation.
- Understanding of SRE principles, SLIs, SLOs, reliability engineering, and service health management.
- Experience with automation, Infrastructure as Code, APIs, CI/CD, GitOps, or similar technologies.
Technology Breadth
- Broad understanding of infrastructure, cloud, networking, databases, operating systems, virtualization, containers, and modern application architectures.
- Experience with AWS and/or Azure environments.
- Ability to engage credibly with infrastructure, application, cloud, security, architecture, and operations teams.
Enterprise Integration
- Strong understanding of ITSM and IT operations.
- Experience integrating observability with CMDB, ServiceNow, service mapping, incident management, and automation platforms.
- Understanding of how operational data can support broader service management and operational decision-making.
Leadership & Influence
- Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Ability to influence executives, architects, engineers, operations teams, and vendors.
- Strong executive presence and strategic thinking.
- Ability to operate at both the strategic and technical levels.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
- 10+ years of experience in infrastructure, operations, architecture, monitoring, observability, or related technology disciplines.
- 5+ years leading enterprise technology strategy or transformation initiatives.
- Experience leading Monitoring & Observability modernization or transformation.
- Experience with enterprise observability, AIOps, SRE, OpenTelemetry, or intelligent event management.
- Relevant certifications in observability, cloud, architecture, automation, SRE, or ITIL.
Leadership Competencies
- Monitoring & Observability Thought Leadership
- Strategic Technology Vision
- Transformation Leadership
- Technical Credibility
- Innovation & Technology Evangelism
- Reliability & Operational Excellence
- Business & Technology Alignment
- Executive Presence
- Cross-Functional Influence
- Continuous Improvement
- Results-Oriented Execution
- Talent Development & Mentorship
Our Interview Practices
To maintain a fair and genuine hiring process, we kindly ask that all candidates participate in interviews without the assistance of AI tools or external prompts. Our interview process is designed to assess your individual skills, experiences, and communication style. We value authenticity and want to ensure we’re getting to know you—not a digital assistant. To help maintain this integrity, we ask to remove virtual backgrounds and include in-person interviews in our hiring process. Please note that use of AI-generated responses or third-party support during interviews will be grounds for disqualification from the recruitment process.
Applicants may be required to appear onsite at a Wolters Kluwer office as part of the recruitment process.
Compensation:
$120,000.00 - $214,350.00 USD
This role is eligible for Bonus.
Compensation range listed is based on primary location of the position. Actual base salary offer is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience and actual hiring location. Your recruiter can share more information about the specific offer for the job location during the hiring process.
Additional Information:
Wolters Kluwer offers a wide variety of competitive benefits and programs to help meet your needs and balance your work and personal life, including but not limited to: Medical, Dental, & Vision Plans, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Commuter Benefits, Tuition Assistance Plan, Vacation and Sick Time, and Paid Parental Leave. Full details of our benefits are available upon request.
