Senior Software Engineer II - LLM Observability

What We’re Building Honeycomb is a service for the near and present future, defining observability and raising expectations of what developer tools can do! We’re working with well known companies like HelloFresh, Slack, LaunchDarkly, and Vanguard and more across a range of industries. This is an exciting time in our trajectory, we’ve closed Series D funding, scaled past the 200-person mark, and were named to Forbes’ America’s Best Startups of 2022 and 2023! If you want to see what we’ve been up to, please check out these blog posts and Honeycomb.io press releases. Who We Are We come for the impact, and stay for the culture! We’re a talented, opinionated, passionate, fiercely inclusive, and responsible group of bees. We have conviction and we strive to live our values every day. We want our people to do what they truly love amongst a team of highly talented (but humble) peers. How We Work We are a fully distributed company, which means we believe it is not where you sit, but how you deliver that matters most. We invest in our people and care about how you orient to our culture and processes. At the same time we imbue a lot of trust, autonomy, and accountability from Day 1. #LI-Remote • Little more about the team: The LLM Observability (LLM O11y) team builds the foundational layer that makes AI workloads observable in Honeycomb. We define how AI systems are represented in telemetry (spans, traces, token usage, cost, eval signals, etc), and ensure that data from diverse ecosystems (e.g., LangChain, OpenLLMetry, Braintrust) is normalized into a consistent OpenTelemetry-based model. This team owns the infrastructure and data model that all downstream AI observability experiences rely on. Our work powers everything from cost analysis to anomaly detection. If you’re excited about defining and building the “source of truth” for how AI systems behave in production, this is the team for you. What you’ll do in the role: • Design, build, and deliver backend systems and APIs. You'll architect and implement APIs and backend services in Go, emphasizing clarity, maintainability, and backward compatibility. You'll think proactively about cost, scale, and risk — anticipating technical issues and exploring alternatives and tradeoffs thoroughly. • Build and maintain full-stack product features. You'll contribute frontend (React/TypeScript) and backend (Go) code to build robust product features, maintaining proficiency across the stack. You'll deliver impactful features that add value for our customers, our team, and Honeycomb overall. • Provide technical leadership. You'll define patterns and operational guidelines that raise the bar for the team and beyond. You'll plan, lead, and deliver complex, multi-team projects — including ones with external dependencies — ensuring alignment and mentoring teammates along the way. We rotate tech lead responsibilities with each feature to allow everyone on the team to use and grow these skills. • Collaborate across disciplines. You'll work closely within a product triad model alongside design and product partners, from discovery through delivery, iterating quickly based on user feedback. You'll contribute to the team's technical roadmap and help shape quarterly product roadmaps, tying technical considerations to business outcomes. • Support and own your software in production. You'll participate in on-call rotations to ensure reliable operations and proactively address user pain points. You know when to shift between forward-looking feature work and production needs. • Communicate clearly and multiply your impact. Regular written and verbal communication, collaboration, and feedback are foundational skills you'll use daily. You'll mentor engineers, share knowledge, and delegate to help others grow — your goal is to make everyone around you more effective. What you’ll bring to the role: • Deep experience designing, building, and maintaining backend systems. You have substantial expertise building APIs and backend services in Go (or similar languages), with strong opinions about API design, error handling, and developer experience. You've seen many different patterns and have developed your own frameworks for evaluating how to approach new technical challenges. • Frontend proficiency with React and TypeScript. You have professional experience delivering frontend features and contributing to full-stack software through all stages of the development lifecycle, though your primary expertise is in backend systems. • Experience leading complex technical projects. You've planned and delivered projects that span multiple teams or systems, navigating external dependencies and uncertainty. You know how to break down complex work, ship incrementally, and balance technical investment with business goals. • Ownership and autonomy. You proactively identify problems, propose solutions, and own your projects end-to-end — from planning through deployment and ongoing maintenance. You tackle tech debt proactively and can debug the toughest issues through the entire stack. • A track record of making others better. You've mentored engineers, led technical design reviews, and helped raise the quality bar for a team or domain. People come to you for guidance, and you help build leaders around you. • A collaborative and flexible mindset. You're comfortable working cross-functionally, pivoting priorities to address evolving customer or business needs, and maintaining strong teamwork. We work by building small changes and iterating based on customer interaction. • Clear, open communication. We see clear, thoughtful, and regular written and face-to-face communication — including a willingness to give and receive feedback — as a fundamental engineering skill and one of the strongest predictors of engineering impact, not just a nice to have, and we hope you do too. • An interest in observability and production culture. We maintain an on-call rotation and work hard to keep it from becoming a bad experience. You've supported software in production and have opinions about how to do it well. Bonus points if you want to fold that experience into the Honeycomb product itself. • Nice to have: experience with AI-assisted development. You're proficient with AI coding tools (Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) or are excited to incorporate them into your workflow. We're actively exploring how AI can accelerate our development practices. #LI-DNI Base Salary based on level of experience $183,340—$206,000 USD What you'll get when you join the Hive: • A stake in our success - generous equity with employee-friendly stock program • It’s not about how strong of a negotiator you are - our pay is based on transparent levels relative to experience • Time to recharge with unlimited PTO • A distributed-first mindset and culture (really!) • Home office, co-working, and internet stipend • Full benefits coverage for employees, with additional coverage available for dependents • Up to 16 weeks of paid parental leave, regardless of path to parenthood • Annual development allowance • And much more... Please note we cannot currently sponsor or support visa transfers at this time. Additionally, in compliance with applicable law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work. Phishing and Recruitment Scam Warning: We take your security seriously. Please be aware that recruitment scams are increasingly common and scammers may create email addresses or websites to impersonate Honeycomb employees. To help protect you: • All communications will come from an @honeycomb.io email address • We occasionally work with external recruiting agencies. These partners will use legitimate business email addresses—never personal accounts like Gmail or Yahoo. • Our recruiting process will never ask you to provide financial or sensitive personal information, including but not limited to: • Social security or tax identification numbers • Credit card numbers • Bank account information Diversity & Accommodations: We're committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace—where people of all backgrounds, identities, experiences, and abilities are welcomed, valued, and supported. We recognize that there is no single path to success and embrace nontraditional career journeys and diverse perspectives as key to building stronger, more innovative teams. We strive to ensure an inclusive experience throughout every stage of our hiring process and are happy to provide reasonable accommodations as needed. If you require accommodations or accessible formats at any point during our hiring process, please let your recruiter know. As an equal opportunity employer our hiring process is designed to put you at ease and help you show your best work. If there’s anything we can do to improve your experience, we’re always open to feedback. Privacy Notice: If you apply for a job at Honeycomb and your application is unsuccessful (or you withdraw from the process or decline our offer), Honeycomb will retain your information after your application for a period of time in accordance with local laws. We retain this information for various reasons, including in case we face a legal challenge in respect of a recruitment decision, to consider you for other current or future jobs at Honeycomb, and to help us better understand, analyze and improve our recruitment processes. For more information regarding our privacy practices please see the Honeycomb Privacy Notice. If you do not want us to retain your information for consideration for other roles, or want us to update it, please contact privacy@honeycomb.io. Please note, however, that we may retain some information if required by law or as necessary to protect ourselves from legal claims.