Solutions Architect

Lightstep enables teams to detect and resolve regressions quickly, regardless of system scale or complexity. We integrate seamlessly into daily workflows, whether you are proactively optimizing performance or investigating a root cause so you can quickly get back to building features. We continue to grow our talented, low-ego, team! We believe that we should always align our actions toward a common purpose, that trust is paramount and must be cultivated, that the most valuable team members multiply rather than add, and that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously (except when we’re writing way-too-long sentences about our values). We believe that assembling and retaining an inclusive and diverse team is the best way to grow a successful company.

We created Lightstep because we understand the massive architectural transformation underway in the software industry, and we saw an opportunity to accelerate it, all while improving the quality of the developer and end-user experience. While we learned a great deal from our experiences building Dapper (Google’s distributed tracing solution) and Monarch (Google’s high-availability metrics solution), Lightstep is in many ways a reaction to and a generational improvement beyond those approaches. Our story as individuals and as a company revolves around continuous learning, careful listening, and the belief that these fundamentally new software architectures require fundamentally new solutions.

Lightstep is looking for a Solutions Architect to help our most technical customers instrument, adopt, and utilize Lightstep across their entire system architecture and software engineering team. As a Solutions Architect, you will become a technical expert in Lightstep’s products, develop a keen understanding of OpenTracing, and help customers increase the reliability and performance of the systems fueling their business. You will be responsible for our relationships with our most strategic customers and be their trusted advisor. You will also help Lightstep improve our products, tools, and processes by working with your teammates across Customer Success, Product, and Engineering to develop new methods to enable us to help customers tackle their performance problems faster and more effectively.

You’d be a great addition if…

• You have experience working as a Site Reliability Engineer, DevOps Engineer, or Software Developer.
• You have experience with modern software development, microservices, distributed systems, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• You have a strong knowledge of network protocols, load balancing,
• You would enjoy working directly with our customers including VPs of Engineering, DevOps teams, Site Reliability teams, and Observability/Platform teams while serving as their advocate within Lightstep.
• You are comfortable engaging with business executives and engineering teams to drive successful business outcomes via intelligent technical decisions plus effective collaboration and project management.
• You are passionate about developing your soft skills as much as your technical skills.
• You display trustworthiness and build credibility quickly via empathy, clear communication, and a deep understanding of people, technology, and business.
• You are a self-starter and caring teammate who is energized by building new processes, tools, and solutions alongside others.
• You would be excited to manage your own travel schedule and travel 10 - 15% of the time to visit customers in person.

Our ideal teammate...

• Has worked on (and/or have a lot of curiosity about) large-scale distributed systems and microservice-based architectures.
• Possesses experience developing in Go, Java, Python, and/or Node.js.
• Has utilized any of the following tools to investigate system performance issues:
  • Distributed Tracing: Jaeger, Zipkin. 
  • Monitoring & Analytics: DataDog, Prometheus, Wavefront, Grafana.
  • Logging: Splunk, Sumo Logic, Loggly.
  • Application Performance Management (APM): New Relic, AppDynamics, Dynatrace.
• Has a working knowledge of container management/orchestration software like Kubernetes, Mesos, Docker Swarm, etc.
• Has or would like to contribute to open source projects.

What you can expect to do in this role…

• After 30 Days: You have developed a basic understanding of Lightstep [x]PM’s system architecture, how customers instrument with OpenTracing, and how customers utilize the Lightstep [x]PM solution. You have begun to address customer questions/needs, begun to draft user documents, and know how to demonstrate the full functionality of the Lightstep product. You have also begun to build strong relationships with all your Lightstep colleagues.
• After 60 Days: You have begun to own customer relationships, are providing technical instrumentation consulting directly to fellow engineers. You are able to stand up instances of Lightstep Satellites (AWS AMI, Debian package) with customers and for testing purposes. You have prepared strategic roadmaps with customers to guide their instrumentation, adoption, and utilization of Lightstep [x]PM. You have made fundamental contributions and developed improvements to how we field and resolve technical questions and needs for customers. You have also begun to play a first-hand role in recruiting and onboarding new members of the Lightstep team.
• After 90 Days: You know Lightstep and OpenTracing in and out and are beginning to make contributions to the OpenTracing community. You have developed technical tooling and automated processes that have significantly improved our ability to operate as a team to effectively enable customers. You have established yourself as a technical lead on our team and are actively producing educating material and engagements to help customers and new hires ramp. You are handling complex technical issues for customers without assistance from Engineering and leading detailed product/feature improvements with our Product and Engineering teams.

Lightstep, a part of ServiceNow, is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or nationality, ancestry, age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, veteran status or any other category protected by law.

All new employees hired in the United States are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, subject to such exceptions as required by law. If hired, you will be required to submit proof of full vaccination or have an approved accommodation, by your start date. Visit our Candidate FAQ page to learn more. If you require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process, or are limited in the ability or unable to access or use this online application process and need an alternative method or applying, you may contact us at [email protected] for assistance.