Lead Software Engineer - Observability

Why Wellmark: We are a mutual insurance company owned by our policy holders across Iowa and South Dakota, and we’ve built our reputation on over 80 years’ worth of trust. We are not motivated by profits. We are motivated by the well-being of our friends, family, and neighbors–our members. If you’re passionate about joining an organization working hard to put its members first, to provide best-in-class service, and one that is committed to sustainability and innovation, consider applying today!

Why Wellmark Technology? Wellmark is building innovative, modern solutions using cutting edge technology. We are driving organizational transformation and business strategy by empowering our technology team to innovate new and elegant solutions to enhance the customer experience. Together, we are leaning into the future, owning the outcome, and driving organizational change to transform how we work. 

You will be responsible for designing, building, and maintaining observability platform tools and frameworks that enable development and operations teams to monitor and improve the performance, availability, and reliability of systems. This role involves designing and implementing systems that monitor and analyze the performance/health of software applications and infrastructure, ensuring high availability and reliability. The engineer will collaborate closely with development, site reliability engineering, DevOps, and infrastructure teams to deliver a seamless observability ecosystem. Key responsibilities include architecting observability platforms, integrating monitoring tools into software pipelines, ensuring system health visibility, reducing mean time to detection (MTTD), and promoting a culture of proactive monitoring and reliability engineering. 

What you will own:  

• Design, build, and maintain observability platforms with reusability across services in mind.  
• Develop scalable, automated pipelines for ingesting, transforming, and visualizing telemetry data. 
• Integrate observability tools (e.g., Dynatrace, Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, Datadog, New Relic, OpenTelemetry) with existing infrastructure and applications. 
• Enable root cause analysis through correlation of metrics, logs, and traces. 
• Analyze telemetry data to identify performance bottlenecks and optimize resource allocation for improved efficiency  
• Define SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets with stakeholders for critical services. 
• Improve incident response by enhancing monitoring dashboards, alerts, and automated notifications. 

Preferred: 

• 3–5 years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps, or Observability/Monitoring engineering roles. 
• Proven experience building or administering observability platforms in production environments. 
• Track record of improving system reliability and reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR). 
• Hands-on experience with one or more observability platforms: Dynatrace, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Elastic Stack, Splunk, Datadog, New Relic, AppDynamics, Honeycomb. 
• Strong knowledge of observability concepts: metrics, logs, traces, SLOs/SLIs, error budgets. 
• Experience working within an Agile team environment 
• Experience deploying and maintaining Open Telemetry-based observability pipelines. 
• Prior experience working in highly regulated environments with compliance observability needs. 
• Contributions to observability open-source projects. 
• Familiarity with chaos engineering practices to validate monitoring and resilience. 
• Certifications from AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud 
• Demonstrated experience coaching/mentoring others by providing guidance and feedback to help an employee or groups of employees strengthen their knowledge and skills to accomplish a task or solve a problem 
• Excellent problem-solving skills with a strong analytical mindset. 
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical topics to both engineers and business stakeholders. 
• Proven experience with designing technical architecture and keeping abreast of existing and emerging technologies. 
• Experiencing consulting with stakeholders to understand needs with the intention of providing advice and counsel. Also interacting appropriately with others to guide individuals or groups to accomplish work, reach consensus, or take action. 
• Proficiency in programming or scripting languages (Python, Go, Java, Bash, etc.) for observability automation. 
• Experience with containerization and orchestration platforms (Docker, Kubernetes). 
• Deep knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), observability/monitoring services, operating systems (Windows/Linux), networking, and containerization. 
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices, and cloud-native architectures. 
• Proficiency in CI/CD pipelines and how observability integrates into DevOps workflows. 
• Knowledge of incident management and on-call practices. 
• Experience with supporting observability and monitoring for Artificial Intelligence agents 

Required: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, MIS, or related field of study and at least 5 years of development experience (ex. Angular, NodeJS, TypeScript, C++, .NET, Java, SQL) OR 9 years of related and applicable experience. 
• Strong analytical problem-solving skills. Accuracy and high attention to detail. Previous experience troubleshooting and developing creative technical solutions. Ability to provide innovative solutions to complex issues. 
• Demonstrated experience in software development lifecycle methodologies. 
• Demonstrated ability to communicate with and coach/mentor team members, while setting an example in maintaining a positive attitude, staying calm under pressure, being approachable, and respectful and taking responsibility for failures. 
• Big picture thinker with the ability to translate the value of the Wellmark as a Service (WaaS) strategy to company strategy when making design and development decisions. 
• Demonstrated, strong ability to gather information, perform necessary research needed for root cause analysis, problem definition and formulation, recommend solution implementation, verification, and ongoing optimization, using data to support recommendations. 
• Demonstrated ability to build relationships to reach outcomes that gain the support and acceptance of all parties. Ability to communicate key information in a timely manner to the appropriate stakeholder audience with the ability to adjust communication style that will best suit the audience. 
• Ability to thrive in fast-paced environment with changing priorities. Excellent organizational skills. Strong time management skills with the ability to set and meet established timeframes with little direction, while assuring data and information integrity. 
• Eagerness to learn and stay current on industry trends and have a continuous learning mindset.  
• Ability to collaborate and work as a team to accomplish goals and/or solve problems. Ability to earn trust and respect from peers, leadership, and stakeholders. Ability to learn by actively listening and applying coaching feedback. 
• Ability to lead, support and work within a diverse development team model including global staffing, crowd sourcing, etc. 

a. Lead system development and engineering for highly complex programs. Coordinate the preparation, coding, testing, and debugging of complex programs; including the analysis and development of workflows that utilize emerging technology and meet and exceed Wellmark’s evolving business needs. 

b. Serve as subject matter expert in the implementation of innovative and cost-effective business solutions for multiple applications and systems utilizing information technology, business, and industry trends. 

c. Provide leadership, training, and guidance to others on the team in the gathering of information, necessary research needed for root cause analysis, problem definition and formulation, solution implementation, verification, and ongoing optimization. Ensure analysis of defects to find root cause and guide others in the identification of potential improvement opportunities. 

d. Mentor, guide and problem-solve with other technology areas in the development and implementation of solutions, including how to use new or enhanced software/applications. 

e. Coordinate with company resources to accomplish integration of products and processes and complex solutions. Provide timely and accurate results, and exceptional customer service. 

f. Utilize established relationships with Wellmark leaders and acts as a primary consultant on business status, issues, process improvements and technology enhancements or capabilities. 

g. Participate in project proposals, estimates and proof-of-concept activities as needed. 

h. Maintain awareness of industry’s best practices and standards and proactively participates in industry/knowledge reference groups relative to role. Provide direction for enterprise standards. Conduct code reviews and monitor standard adherence. 

i. Other duties as assigned. 

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Remote Eligible: You will have the flexibility to work where you are most productive. This position is eligible to work fully remote. Depending on your location, you may still have the option to come into a Wellmark office if you wish to. Your leader may ask you to come into the office occasionally for specific meetings or other ‘moments that matter’ as well.  

An Equal Opportunity Employer

The policy of Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield is to recruit, hire, train and promote individuals in all job classifications without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by law.

Applicants requiring a reasonable accommodation due to a disability at any stage of the employment application process should contact us at [email protected]

Please inform us if you meet the definition of a "Covered DoD official".

At this time, Wellmark is not considering applicants for this position that require any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authorization) now or in the future to work in the United States. This includes, but IS NOT LIMITED TO: F1-OPT, F1-CPT, H-1B, TN, L-1, J-1, etc. For additional information around work authorization needs please refer to the following resources:Nonimmigrant Workers and Green Card for Employment-Based Immigrants 

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