Senior Data Engineer (Observability Engineer)

About Activate Interactive and Opportunity

Activate Interactive Pte Ltd is a premier technology consultancy based in Singapore with operations in Malaysia and Indonesia. We specialize in delivering comprehensive, cost-efficient, and impactful technology solutions, including mobile and web applications and cloud technologies that help clients overcome technology challenges and boost business efficiency. Our mission is to create positive impacts on people’s lives and the environment through technology, providing a supportive environment that empowers employees to innovate and reach their full potential.

We are expanding and invite passionate individuals excited about growing with us, especially in mobile and web technologies making a meaningful difference.

Role Overview

The Co-Development Business Unit seeks a Data Engineer with a specialty in observability (Observability Engineer) for a one-year contract position. This role supports GovTech’s Digital Excellence & Products Division within Singapore’s Ministry of Education, dedicated to creating impactful educational technology and services enhancing teaching, learning, and school operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and manage comprehensive observability systems across on-premises infrastructure, networks, applications, cloud, and hybrid platforms.
• Aggregate, correlate, and analyze metrics, events, logs, and traces to provide clear insight into service health and performance.
• Establish and enforce instrumentation standards using OpenTelemetry and similar technologies for both applications and infrastructure.
• Support engineering teams in telemetry integration including SDKs and agents.
• Create and maintain conventions for telemetry metadata like service naming, tagging, and correlation.
• Continuously identify and close gaps in observability capabilities for the SSOE platform.
• Define SLIs, SLOs, alerting rules, and monitor key service health indicators.
• Develop operational dashboards to display infrastructure health, application performance, user experience, and service reliability to diverse organizational levels.
• Design actionable alert systems to enable effective issue detection and response while minimizing false alarms.
• Set monitoring and operational-readiness standards for new components and platforms.
• Manage secure telemetry routing and collection across varied environments adhering to data classification and security requirements.
• Collaborate with multiple teams to integrate telemetry across a broad set of platforms, respecting network and security boundaries.
• Use observability data for capacity planning, performance analysis, and operational decision-making.
• Assist during incident response using telemetry to identify issues and conduct root-cause analysis, supporting continuous service improvement.
• Maintain observability documentation, operational procedures, and participate in on-call duties.
• Ensure observability components and configuration are version-controlled and compliant with security and audit practices.

Desired Qualifications and Experience

• 3 to 5 years’ experience in observability engineering, SRE, platform or infrastructure engineering.
• Minimum 2 years’ practical experience implementing or managing observability and monitoring in production.
• Proficiency working with metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, alerting, and troubleshooting in live environments.
• Experience supporting production infrastructure, distributed systems, and hybrid cloud/on-premises environments.
• Demonstrated ability to implement instrumentation in collaboration with engineering and operations teams.
• Knowledge of Infrastructure as Code and automation for deployable observability solutions.
• Understanding of designing reliable, scalable, and secure observability solutions focusing on meaningful operational signals and user impact.
• Experience maintaining observability across legacy, containerized, and cloud-native systems.
• Applying government data classification and security requirements particularly in the educational sector.
• Familiarity with Singapore government platforms (TechPass, SHIP-HATS, SEED, GCC) and related data classification standards.
• Relevant AWS or Azure cloud certifications.
• Hands-on experience with OpenTelemetry at scale, Dynatrace, Elastic, Grafana, Prometheus, and cloud-native telemetry tools.
• Knowledge of event-driven telemetry such as Kafka and MQ, and automation tools like Terraform/OpenTofu and Ansible.

Employee Benefits and Culture

• Competitive salary with performance-based bonuses aligning with skills and contributions.
• Medical coverage including outpatient and specialist care, life and health insurance, plus customizable flexible benefits and allowances.
• Wellness initiatives supporting physical and mental health year-round.
• Career development through learning programs, certification support, and dedicated budgets; recognized as a SHRI 2025 Gold winner in Learning & Development.
• Clear career progression pathways along technical/domain expert or leadership tracks.
• A competency framework to aid development, performance, and success.
• Flexible work arrangements allowing choices in work location, hours, and workload within company guidelines.

Additional Information

Activate Interactive is committed to equal employment opportunities irrespective of race, religion, gender, or other protected characteristics. Privacy and data security are paramount; candidate personal data is managed specifically for recruitment purpose with transparency and rights provided in our Privacy Notice.