Staff Engineer, Guardian

About the role

LaunchDarkly seeks a Staff Engineer to innovate at the intersection of software releases and system monitoring. You will help shape the future of how software is delivered, focusing on making every release safer, faster, and more dependable. This role involves redefining release processes, measuring feature impact in real-time, and simplifying troubleshooting.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Initiate and prototype new product ideas, exploring novel integrations and implementations related to feature flags and observability. You will have significant autonomy to identify opportunities, validate concepts, and set the technical direction for new product areas.
• Provide expert guidance on observability systems, helping to reimagine how engineering teams understand the live impact of code changes. You will be a key resource on the evolving observability landscape, translating industry trends and user challenges into product prototypes.
• Work closely with product managers, designers, data scientists, and other engineers to design and advance our observability products. Your experience will facilitate discussions to align technical strategies with business objectives, ensuring scalable and effective feature delivery.
• Proactively identify areas for product and user experience enhancements, using data and feedback to propose innovative solutions. You will lead the implementation of these improvements, balancing user needs, business goals, and technical feasibility.

Requirements

• 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven history of delivering full-stack features to production.
• Experience with observability systems, statistical analysis pipelines, and event-driven metrics infrastructure.
• A strong understanding of data platforms, backend services, and cloud-native infrastructure architecture.
• Experience leading the development of new products from initial concept to validated direction.
• In-depth knowledge of the observability ecosystem, including APM, distributed tracing, OpenTelemetry, and error tracking, with a clear perspective on its future.
• A demonstrated ability to work independently, defining project scope and direction with minimal supervision.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with Go, React, and Kubernetes.

Skills & tools

• Go
• React
• Kubernetes

Practical notes

• Compensation for this role is structured by geographic zones within the US:
• Zone 1 (San Francisco/Bay Area, NYC Metro, Boston, Seattle): $214,800 - $295,350
• Zone 2 (Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Austin, Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago): $193,400 - $265,870
• Zone 3 (All other US locations): $182,600 - $251,020
• This role includes Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), comprehensive health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits.
• LaunchDarkly recruiters will only contact you from @launchdarkly.com email addresses or from "Verified Recruiter" accounts on LinkedIn. Be wary of communications from other domains. Legitimate recruiters will not ask for money, fees, or banking information before an offer.