Sr. Elastic Observability Engineer

ECS is seeking a Sr. Elastic Observability Engineer to work in our Hampton, VA or Boston, MA office.

Are you passionate about observability, automation, and building reliable systems? Join ECS as an Elastic Observability Engineer, where you’ll design and operate modern monitoring solutions that support mission‑critical environments. ECS delivers cloud, cybersecurity, AI, data, and digital transformation solutions, and we are seeking experts who thrive at the intersection of automation and observability.

We are seeking a skilled Sr Elastic Observability Engineer to join our ECS Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP). This role focuses on deploying, automating, and maintaining the Elastic Observability stack using containerized environments and configuration management tools like Docker and Ansible. You will work with cross‑functional teams to ensure reliable data ingestion, performant dashboards, and high‑quality monitoring coverage across distributed systems.

Experience with Kubernetes is preferred as we continue modernizing and scaling our observability platform.

• Deploy, configure, and maintain Elastic Observability components (Elastic Agent, Beats, Logstash, Kibana, APM).
• Build and manage containerized Elastic environments using Docker (including Compose and containerized pipelines).
• Automate provisioning, updates, and configuration using Ansible.
• Preferred:
  Deploy and operate Elastic components in Kubernetes (ECK, Helm, operators, or custom manifests).
• Maintain and optimize pipelines for logs, metrics, and traces across distributed systems.
• Develop dashboards, alerting rules, and visualizations in Kibana or other observability tools.
• Troubleshoot ingestion issues, mapping problems, parsing failures, and data quality concerns.
• Work with application and infrastructure teams to onboard new services into observability.
• Implement ILM policies, data retention standards, and monitoring best practices.
• Document architectures, SOPs, and engineering workflows.
• Stay current with Elastic features, observability trends, cloud‑native monitoring, and automation patterns.

Salary Range: $140,000 - $205,000

• Strong experience with the Elastic Stack, specifically Elastic Observability (logging, metrics, tracing).
• Hands‑on experience with Docker for containerized deployments.
• Strong proficiency with Ansible for automation and configuration management.
• Solid understanding of Linux systems and networking fundamentals.
• Experience parsing and normalizing log data (pipelines, ingest processors).
• Ability to build and maintain dashboards, alerts, SLO/SLA visibility, and health monitoring.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to support domestic or international travel as needed (short‑duration, planned).
• Must possess and maintain a U.S. Passport.
• Must have an active TS/SCI clearance.

• Kubernetes experience strongly preferred (ECK, Helm, Operators, or cluster‑level operations).
• Elastic certifications (Elastic Certified Engineer or Elastic Observability Engineer).
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Scripting experience with Python, Bash, or Power Shell.
• Experience with tracing frameworks like Open Telemetry.
• Exposure to SRE practices (SLOs, error budgets, runbooks, reliability engineering).

ECS is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate or allow discrimination on the basis of any characteristic protected by law. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, or local jurisdiction law.

ECS is a leading mid‑sized provider of technology services to the United States Federal Government. We are focused on people, values and purpose. Every day, our 3,300+ employees focus on providing their technical talent to support the Federal Agencies and Departments of the US Government to serve, protect and defend the American People.