Senior Observability Engineer – Elastic Stack / Kibana

JOB TITLE: Senior Observability Engineer – Elastic Stack / Kibana
JOB LOCATION: Sydney, NSW
JOB DURATION: 6-month contract (potential extension)

Role purpose:

The Senior Observability Engineer – Elastic Stack / Kibana will deliver practical application monitoring, observability and DevOps-aligned operational outcomes using logs already available in ELK. The role focuses on Kibana dashboards, KQL-based analysis, alerting, tuning, automation support and operational handover across business-critical systems. This is not primarily a log-ingestion or ELK platform administration role.

Objectives:

• Implement consistent application monitoring and observability capabilities using logs already available in EL.
• Build actionable Kibana dashboards, saved searches, visualisations and drill-down views for agreed use cases.
• Configure, test and tune alerts to support timely triage, response and operational ownership.

Key Responsibilities:

• Analyse application logs already available in ELK and confirm whether fields, identifiers and events support agreed monitoring use cases.
• Translate application, operational and security monitoring requirements into Kibana dashboards, saved searches, filters and investigation views.
• Develop and maintain KQL queries and alert logic for service health, failures, exceptions, transaction outcomes, authentication events and other agreed indicators
• Configure alert rules, thresholds, severity and routing in consultation with application, security and ELK platform teams.
• Test and tune dashboards and alerts, document known limitations, false positives, exclusions and approved thresholds.
• Work with Java application teams to interpret application behaviour and recommend targeted logging improvements where the current data is insufficient.
• Maintain delivery progress, decisions and actions in Jira, and prepare implementation documentation, runbooks and knowledge articles in Confluence.
• Provide knowledge transfer and support transition of completed monitoring capability to accountable operational teams.

Key Deliverables:

• Validated monitoring requirements and log-field mapping for assigned use cases.
• Kibana dashboards, saved searches, KQL queries, visualisations and drill-down views.
• Configured and tested alert rules, thresholds, severity, routing and evidence views.
• Documented tuning decisions, known limitations, operational runbooks and Confluence knowledge articles.
• Knowledge-transfer sessions and handover documentation for application, security and platform support teams.

Skills and Experience:

• Strong experience in observability engineering, application monitoring, log analytics or application security monitoring in enterprise environments.
• Hands-on experience with Kibana dashboards, Lens, filters, controls, drill-downs, saved searches and dashboard usability.
• Practical knowledge of Elasticsearch and ELK concepts, including indices, data views, fields, aggregations and query performance.
• Strong KQL skills for investigation, monitoring and alerting use cases.
• Experience designing and tuning alert thresholds, severity models and false-positive treatment.
• Ability to analyse application logs to identify operational failures, security-relevant events, patterns and root causes.
• Experience with Java application logs, stack traces, logging frameworks and application behaviour.
• DevOps experience, including Linux/Unix, shell scripting, CI/CD awareness, release support, environment validation and automation activities.
• Experience using Jira and Confluence to manage delivery and maintain operational knowledge.
• Strong troubleshooting, written communication, stakeholder engagement and handover skills

Desirable Skills and Experience:

• Experience with Elastic alerting, rule management, connectors and case or incident workflow integration.
• Exposure to Azure Monitor, Microsoft Sentinel, CI/CD tooling, cloud platforms or other SIEM and security operations platforms.
• Understanding of secure logging practices, monitoring control assurance and operational support models.

Please submit your current resume to apply. If you'd like a confidential discussion about the role, please contact Bidisha Swayamprava on Bidisha.Swayamprava@davidsonwp.com, quoting reference JN -102026-44557. To learn more about Davidson, visit davidsonwp.com.