Manager, Software Engineering - Observability

Summary

Figma is a company dedicated to making design accessible to all, empowering teams to streamline workflows and collaborate in real time. They are seeking an Engineering Manager for Observability to lead a team focused on enhancing the visibility and efficiency of their platform through advanced monitoring and cost engineering strategies. The role involves defining technical standards, optimizing observability systems, and collaborating across various teams to improve system health and cost efficiency.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of engineers responsible for the reliability, scalability, and evolution of Figma’s observability and cost engineering platforms
• Own and operate Figma’s core observability stack, including vendor platforms such as Datadog, ensuring high availability, strong data quality, and effective signal-to-noise across metrics, logs, and traces
• Define and drive the technical strategy for instrumentation standards, observability libraries, agents, and operators used to monitor internal and external facing services
• Explore and implement innovative, AI-driven approaches to anomaly detection, root cause analysis, signal correlation, and operational automation
• Establish clear frameworks for cost attribution, budgeting, forecasting, and alerting across infrastructure and observability spend, enabling teams to make informed tradeoffs
• Partner with infrastructure, product engineering, finance, and security teams to improve visibility into system health and cost efficiency at scale
• Lead initiatives to optimize observability footprint and spend, balancing depth of insight with performance and cost considerations
• Coach and mentor engineers through career development, performance feedback, and technical leadership, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and high quality execution

Skills

• 4+ years of experience leading infrastructure, observability, or platform engineering teams, with a track record of delivering highly reliable production systems
• Deep hands-on experience with modern observability platforms (e.g., Datadog, OpenTelemetry) across metrics, logs, and distributed tracing
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, instrumentation best practices, SLO design, and incident response workflows
• Experience driving cost transparency and accountability initiatives, including cost attribution, budgeting, forecasting, and alerting in cloud environments
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, drive cross-functional alignment (Engineering, Finance, Security), and make sound architectural decisions in complex environments
• Experience designing or evolving company-wide observability standards, shared libraries, and agent/operator-based integrations
• Background in cost optimization for infrastructure or observability tooling, including vendor negotiations and usage modeling
• Experience applying AI or machine learning techniques to anomaly detection, root cause analysis, or operational automation
• Familiarity with OpenTelemetry and modern instrumentation frameworks across multiple programming languages
• Experience scaling and mentoring high-performing engineering teams through platform expansion or significant architectural change

Qualifications

Must Haves

• 4+ years of experience leading infrastructure, observability, or platform engineering teams, with a track record of delivering highly reliable production systems
• Deep hands-on experience with modern observability platforms (e.g., Datadog, OpenTelemetry) across metrics, logs, and distributed tracing
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, instrumentation best practices, SLO design, and incident response workflows
• Experience driving cost transparency and accountability initiatives, including cost attribution, budgeting, forecasting, and alerting in cloud environments
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, drive cross-functional alignment (Engineering, Finance, Security), and make sound architectural decisions in complex environments

Nice to Haves

• Experience designing or evolving company-wide observability standards, shared libraries, and agent/operator-based integrations
• Background in cost optimization for infrastructure or observability tooling, including vendor negotiations and usage modeling
• Experience applying AI or machine learning techniques to anomaly detection, root cause analysis, or operational automation
• Familiarity with OpenTelemetry and modern instrumentation frameworks across multiple programming languages
• Experience scaling and mentoring high-performing engineering teams through platform expansion or significant architectural change

Benefits

• Equity to employees
• Health, dental & vision
• Retirement with company contribution
• Parental leave & reproductive or family planning support
• Mental health & wellness benefits
• Generous PTO
• Company recharge days
• A learning & development stipend
• A work from home stipend
• Cell phone reimbursement
• Sales incentive pay for most sales roles
• An annual bonus plan for eligible non-sales roles