We are seeking a highly experienced and strategic Observability Lead-Sr. Infrastructure Engineer with a strong Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE), software development, event streaming, and technical leadership focus to define, implement, and scale enterprise observability capabilities. This role combines technical leadership in observability strategy with hands-on, customer-facing engineering, application development expertise, and Kafka/event-driven integration knowledge to deliver high-impact solutions across complex enterprise environments. As an Observability Lead, you will establish the vision and direction for metrics, logs, traces, telemetry pipelines, event streaming, and developer-enabled observability patterns using modern standards such as OpenTelemetry and a combination of open-source and commercial tooling. You will also operate as a forward deployed partner, working directly with engineering, SRE, platform teams, software development teams, and business stakeholders to solve real-world problems and deliver tailored observability implementations in production. In this role, you will drive a transition from reactive monitoring toward proactive, intelligence-driven observability. You will influence architectural decisions, embed observability into the software development lifecycle, guide code-level instrumentation and performance engineering practices, and ensure solutions are scalable and adaptable to diverse use cases, including event-driven and Kafka-based architectures. The role requires the ability to read, troubleshoot, and guide improvements to application code; design automation, APIs, integrations, collectors, dashboards, Kafka-aware telemetry flows, and reusable tooling; and help engineering teams adopt observability as part of day-to-day software delivery. Success in this position means improving system reliability, reducing mean-time-to-detect and resolve (MTTD/MTTR), enabling faster root-cause analysis, increasing engineering velocity, and creating a consistent, high-fidelity observability experience. You will also translate field learnings into reusable implementation patterns, code assets, automation, Kafka/event-streaming practices, developer standards, and enterprise platform capabilities that inform platform strategy and observability standards. For this opportunity, Truist will not sponsor an applicant for work visa status or employment authorization, nor will we offer any immigration-related support for this position (including, but not limited to H-1B, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, F-1 CPT, J-1, TN-1 or TN-2, E-3, O-1, or future sponsorship for U.S. lawful permanent residence status.) This position is office-centric 5 days a week in one of our Truist hub locations. ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Following is a summary of the essential functions for this job. Other duties may be performed, both major and minor, which are not mentioned below. Specific activities may change from time to time. 1. Works to achieve operational targets with major impact on the infrastructure engineering department or job area results and contributes to the development of goals for area of responsibility. 2. Designs, builds, manages, and implements enterprise infrastructure technology platforms and systems across cloud, network, database, storage, platform, computing, or middleware domains. 3. Develops and applies automation, monitoring, and optimization techniques to ensure high availability and performance of infrastructure. 4. Manages large infrastructure projects and programs aligned with organizational strategy and regulatory requirements. 5. Collaborates with cross-functional teams and external partners to integrate new technologies and continuously improve infrastructure standards and processes. 6. Troubleshoots and resolves complex technical issues impacting infrastructure performance and reliability. 7. Ensures compliance with technology strategies, standards, and governance to mitigate risks and ensure regulatory adherence. 8. Reviews infrastructure designs, configurations, and procedures to support operational consistency and knowledge sharing. 9. Provides strong technical guidance, training, and direction to infrastructure teams and lower-level technical professionals. 10. Demonstrates innovative influence with stakeholders in supporting business objectives and technical strategic objectives. Qualifications Required Qualifications The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. 1. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field. 2. Minimum of 7 years of professional experience in infrastructure engineering. 3. Advanced knowledge of enterprise infrastructure technologies including cloud, network, database, storage, platform, computing, and middleware. Preferred Qualifications: - Bachelor’s degree and ten or more years of experience, or an equivalent combination of education and work experience - Hands-on experience with OpenTelemetry, including application instrumentation, collector configuration, semantic conventions, and telemetry pipeline design - Experience with observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, Elastic, Splunk, Dynatrace, Datadog, or similar platforms - Strong software development experience in one or more languages such as Python, Go, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript, .NET/C#, Bash, or PowerShell - Ability to read, debug, profile, and guide improvements to application code to identify performance bottlenecks, inefficient queries, memory pressure, dependency latency, threading issues, or error-handling gaps - Experience designing and developing APIs, automation frameworks, command-line utilities, integrations, collectors, dashboards, or reusable internal tools that support observability and operational workflows - Strong Kafka or event streaming platform experience, including producers, consumers, topics, partitions, consumer groups, Kafka Connect, event-driven integration patterns, consumer lag analysis, throughput troubleshooting, and monitoring of Kafka-based services - Strong understanding of software development lifecycle practices including Git-based source control, code review, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, release practices, secure coding, and developer enablement - Strong background in Kubernetes, cloud platforms, containers, microservices, service-oriented architectures, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native application patterns - Experience with infrastructure as code or configuration automation tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Helm, or similar technologies - Experience defining observability strategies, technical standards, developer enablement patterns, event-streaming observability patterns, and engineering roadmaps across multiple application or platform teams - Experience in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, developer advocacy, or customer-facing technical leadership roles - Proven ability to translate customer-specific implementations, code assets, event-streaming patterns, and field learnings into reusable platform capabilities, enterprise standards, and strategic technology recommendations General Description of Available Benefits for Eligible Employees of Truist Financial Corporation: All regular teammates (not temporary or contingent workers) working 20 hours or more per week are eligible for benefits, though eligibility for specific benefits may be determined by the division of Truist offering the position.Truist offers medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability, accidental death and dismemberment, tax-preferred savings accounts, and a 401k plan to teammates. Teammates also receive no less than 10 days of vacation (prorated based on date of hire and by full-time or part-time status) during their first year of employment, along with 10 sick days (also prorated), and paid holidays. For more details on Truists generous benefit plans, please visit . Depending on the position and division, this job may also be eligible for Truists defined benefit pension plan, restricted stock units, and/or a deferred compensation plan. As you advance through the hiring process, you will also learn more about the specific benefits available for any non-temporary position for which you apply, based on full-time or part-time status, position, and division of work.