Senior Backend Software Engineer (Observability)

Remote from: UK, Europe +3 more, Germany, Netherlands, Czechia
Annual salary: Undisclosed
Salary information is not provided for this position. Check our Salary Directory to estimate the average compensation for similar roles.
Department: Software Engineering
Employment type: Full Time,
Job posted: 22 Jun 2026
Apply before: 22 Jul 2026
Experience level: Senior
Views / Applies: 37 / 3

Nebius is the AI cloud company, delivering a unified platform that spans the complete AI journey from data and model training and tuning to production runtime and deployment.

Computer Software
2023

Actively Hiring

AI Summary

Nebius is seeking a Senior Backend Software Engineer to join their Observability Platform team, building core services for logs, metrics, traces, and alerting at scale. The role requires 5+ years of experience, strong Golang skills, and expertise in distributed backend systems. Candidates with experience in open-source observability tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or ClickHouse are preferred. The position offers competitive compensation, career growth, and the opportunity to work on impactful AI projects in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. Nebius is a Nasdaq-listed company with a global presence and a focus on AI cloud infrastructure.

Role DNA

Job Complexity

Easy Hard

Pace & Pressure

Relaxed Fast-paced

Autonomy Level

Guided Full Ownership

Communication Load

Independent Highly Collaborative

AI Insight The role demands 5+ years of experience, deep technical skills in distributed systems and observability, and the ability to troubleshoot complex production issues, indicating a high level of difficulty.

Salary Analysis

AI Insight The salary is not explicitly stated, but for a senior backend engineer with observability specialization in the US market, the typical range is $150k-$220k. The offered compensation is likely competitive given Nebius's focus on top talent and AI innovation.

Key Skills

Golang Kubernetes Observability Distributed Systems Prometheus Grafana ClickHouse OpenTelemetry Scalability Cloud Infrastructure

Cover Letter Sample

Dear Hiring Manager,

I am writing to express my enthusiasm for the Senior Backend Software Engineer (Observability) role at Nebius. With over 6 years of experience in building distributed backend systems and a strong proficiency in Golang, I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to your observability platform. My background includes designing high-volume telemetry ingestion pipelines and working with tools like Prometheus and Grafana, which aligns perfectly with your needs.

I thrive in fast-paced, collaborative environments and am passionate about creating reliable systems that empower engineers. At my previous role, I led the development of a scalable alerting system that reduced incident response time by 30%. I am eager to bring my expertise in observability and AI-assisted troubleshooting to Nebius and help shape the future of AI infrastructure.

Thank you for considering my application. I look forward to the possibility of discussing how I can contribute to your team.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]

Possible Interview Questions

Can you describe a time you optimized a distributed system for high throughput and low latency?

I worked on a telemetry ingestion system handling millions of events per second. By implementing a multi-tiered caching layer and batching writes to ClickHouse, we reduced p99 latency by 60% and increased throughput by 3x. I also profiled bottlenecks using distributed tracing and optimized key data paths.

How would you design a scalable alerting pipeline from scratch?

I would start with a rule evaluation engine that can scale horizontally, using a consistent hashing mechanism to distribute evaluation load. Alerts would be generated via a topic-based message queue and processed by a deduplication and aggregation service. I'd integrate with a time-series database for metric storage and use a state machine to handle alert lifecycle. Finally, I'd ensure the pipeline is resilient to failures by designing for eventual consistency and using idempotent notifications.

Describe your experience with observability tools like Prometheus and Grafana.

I have used Prometheus extensively for metric collection and alerting, including writing custom exporters and recording rules. For Grafana, I have built dashboards that provide real-time visibility into system health and business metrics. I also contributed to an open-source project that enhanced Prometheus's remote write performance.

How do you approach debugging a complex production issue involving multiple services?

First, I gather data from logs, metrics, and traces to identify the symptom and affected components. I then form hypotheses and isolate variables using canary deployments or targeted logging. I work closely with team members to share findings and leverage collective knowledge. For example, I once debugged a cascading failure by correlating latency spikes in traces with a misconfigured connection pool, and fixed it by adjusting pool settings.

Why are you interested in working at Nebius specifically?

I am excited by Nebius's focus on building a full-stack AI cloud platform and the opportunity to work on observability at scale. The company's emphasis on trust, ownership, and fast-moving innovation aligns with my values. I also appreciate the chance to collaborate with a global team of experts and contribute to open-source projects that advance the industry.

About Nebius:

Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to production deployment, without the cost and complexity of building large in-house AI/ML infrastructure.

Built by engineers, for engineers. From large-scale GPU orchestration to inference optimization, we own the hard problems across compute, storage, networking and applied AI.

Listed on Nasdaq (NBIS) and headquartered in Amsterdam, we have a global footprint with R&D hubs across Europe, the UK, North America and Israel. Our team of 1,500+ includes hundreds of engineers with deep expertise across hardware, software and AI R&D.

The role

We are looking for a Senior Backend Software Engineer to join our Observability Platform team in Amsterdam or remotely. Building a reliable and profitable cloud platform is impossible without world-class observability. It spans every layer of the stack — from developer tooling and CI/CD pipelines to Kubernetes, managed services, databases, networking, and customer workloads. Our mission is to provide a unified ecosystem for logs, metrics, traces, alerting, and troubleshooting that enables engineers to understand and operate systems at scale. You will build and scale the core services behind this platform, working on high-volume telemetry ingestion, distributed storage, query engines, alerting pipelines, and new ways to help engineers make sense of operational data, including AI-assisted troubleshooting.

We expect you to have:

5+ years of professional software engineering experience
Strong knowledge of Golang or willingness to quickly switch to it
Experience building distributed backend systems
Solid understanding of software reliability, scalability, and performance
Ability to troubleshoot complex production issues
Teamwork-oriented approach and strong communication skills

It would be an added bonus if you had:

Experience building or contributing to observability platforms, telemetry systems, or related open-source projects such as Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry, VictoriaMetrics, Mimir, Tempo, or similar technologies
Experience using ClickHouse in production

Benefits & Perks:

Competitive compensation
Career growth and learning opportunities
Flexibility and ownership
Collaborative and innovative culture
Opportunity to work on impactful AI projects
International environment and talented teams

What’s it like to work at Nebius:

Fast moving – Bold thinking – Constant growth – Meaningful impact – Trust and real ownership – Opportunity to shape the future of AI

Equal Opportunity Statement:

Nebius is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace and to providing equal employment opportunities in all aspects of employment. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Applicants must be authorized to work in the country in which they apply and will be required to provide proof of employment eligibility as a condition of hire.

If you need accommodations during the application process, please let us know.

Apply now >