IT Monitoring & Observability Engineer

Job Title: IT Monitoring & Observability Engineer

Location: Jackson MI 49201

Mode : Contract (6 Months) Onsite

Position Summary
We are seeking an IT Monitoring / Full-Stack Observability Engineer to design implement and operate enterprise monitoring solutions across on-premises infrastructure and Microsoft Azure cloud environments. This role will be responsible for delivering end-to-end observability-covering infrastructure applications services logs metrics traces and alerting-with a primary focus on SolarWinds (self-hosted) for on-prem monitoring and Azure Monitor for cloud monitoring.
The ideal candidate has strong technical depth in monitoring architecture alert strategy dashboarding and operational response and can partner with infrastructure application and security teams to ensure high availability and performance.

Key Responsibilities

• Monitoring / Observability Platform Ownership
• Own and enhance enterprise monitoring using:
  SolarWinds (Self-Hosted) for on-prem infrastructure monitoring (network server storage virtualization).
  Azure Monitor for Azure cloud monitoring (metrics logs alerts workbooks).
• Define and maintain standards for instrumentation telemetry collection alerting and dashboards across hybrid environments.
  On-Prem Monitoring (SolarWinds)
• Administer and optimize SolarWinds platform components (e.g. Orion modules where applicable).
  Configure monitoring for:
  Network devices (SNMP/WMI/ICMP) routers/switches/firewalls
  Windows/Linux servers
  VMware/Hyper-V and storage platforms (as applicable)
• Build actionable alerts with escalation policies suppressions dependencies and maintenance windows.
• Troubleshoot polling credentialing discovery and performance issues for SolarWinds services and SQL back-end (as needed).
• Azure Monitoring (Azure Monitor / Log Analytics / Application Insights)
  Implement Azure-native monitoring strategy using:
  Azure Monitor Metrics Alerts
  Log Analytics Workspaces
  Application Insights (where applicable)
  Workbooks for visualization and reporting
• Create and maintain KQL queries for logs/insights and operational analytics.
  Establish alert rules for Azure resources (VMs AKS App Services Functions SQL Storage networking etc.).
  Full-Stack Observability Practices
• Drive adoption of observability best practices:
  Golden signals (latency traffic errors saturation)
  SLOs/SLIs (where applicable)
  Noise reduction and alert fatigue prevention
• Ensure dashboards tell an operational story (health performance capacity and trends).
  Support incident response by correlating signals across on-prem cloud.
• Automation Integration & ITSM
  Automate monitoring configuration and reporting through scripting (PowerShell Python) and IaC (Terraform/Bicep as appropriate).
• Integrate monitoring alerts with ITSM tools (e.g. ServiceNow/Jira/Remedy) and collaboration channels (Teams/Email).
• Support continuous improvement through post-incident reviews and monitoring enhancements.

Documentation & Governance

Maintain runbooks SOPs monitoring standards and service maps.
Ensure monitoring adheres to security and compliance requirements (access controls logging retention least privilege).

Required Qualifications

8 years experience in IT monitoring / observability / infrastructure operations in enterprise environments.
Hands-on experience with SolarWinds (Self-Hosted) administration and monitoring configuration.
Hands-on experience with Azure Monitor including Log Analytics alerts and workbooks.
Strong working knowledge of:

Windows Server and Linux fundamentals
Networking concepts (TCP/IP DNS routing SNMP firewalls)
Monitoring protocols and methods (SNMP WMI agents APIs syslog)

Experience building dashboards defining alert thresholds tuning signals and reducing noise.
Proficiency with KQL (Kusto Query Language) for Log Analytics queries.
Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis skills across hybrid systems.
Ability to work in on-call/after-hours rotations (as applicable).

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Skills

SolarWinds module experience (as applicable): NPM SAM NCM VMAN NetFlow etc.
Azure services monitoring experience: AKS App Service Functions SQL MI/DB Key Vault Storage Front Door Azure Firewall etc.
Experience with:

Application performance monitoring (APM) concepts (distributed tracing dependency mapping)
OpenTelemetry instrumentation (helpful but not required)

Familiarity with CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform Bicep ARM).
Knowledge of ITIL processes (Incident/Problem/Change).
Scripting: PowerShell Python REST APIs.
Security monitoring collaboration (e.g. SIEM integrations audit logging RBAC reviews).

Core Competencies

Monitoring architecture & platform operations
Alert engineering (signal-to-noise optimization)
Visualization and operational reporting
Incident response and cross-team coordination
Hybrid infrastructure understanding (on-prem cloud)
Documentation and continuous improvement mindset

Education / Certifications (Optional)

Bachelors degree in IT/CS or equivalent experience
Preferred certifications (any of):

Microsoft (Azure Administrator / Azure Solutions Architect)
SolarWinds training/certification
ITIL Foundation