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

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