Senior Elasticsearch & Observability Engineer

Lisbon, Portugal

Senior (4-6 Years)

Hybrid

English Required Not Accepting Candidates Living Abroad

A senior Elasticsearch & Observability Engineer role focus on designing, building, maintaining, and extending the Elastic Stack to drive observability practices across complex environments (Mainframe, Open Systems, and Container platforms). Day-to-day work combines technical execution, platform optimization, cross-team collaboration, continuous delivery governance, and coaching to drive observability adoption.

What You'll Do

Design, build, maintain, support, and extend the Elastic Stack (Beats, Elastic Agents, Logstash, Elasticsearch, Kibana);
Drive Observability practices and design solutions for applications hosted on Mainframe, Open Systems, and Container platforms;
Ensure platform performance, indexing efficiency, log retention policies, data lifecycle management, and secure access control;
Follow vendor updates, new feature releases, and market trends to continuously evolve the observability platform;
Work closely with development teams, architects, and operations teams to ensure the seamless integration of observability and CI/CD knowledge.
Establish best practices and governance for application monitoring, and compliance with coding standards/guidelines;
Coach and mentor team members, driving the adoption of new observability solutions across the organization;
Collaborate with stakeholders to analyze needs, estimate effort for new features, co-create value-driven roadmaps, and report progress to Product Owners/Management;
Lead production troubleshooting, root cause analysis (RCA), incident handling (P1/P2), and release execution.

What You'll Need Qualifications

University degree in Computer Science, Engineering or comparable technical field;
5-10 years of hands-on experience in IT environments with focus on observability and production support;
Proven track record in Agile delivery models and incident/release management;
Solid experience in cross-team coordination, stakeholder communication, and effort estimation;
OS & Infrastructure knowledge: Linux and Windows fundamentals (processes, file systems, shell, key metrics); Mainframe knowledge is a plus.

Technical Skills

Strong hands-on expertise with Elastic platform (Beats, Elastic Agents, Logstash, Elasticsearch, Kibana, OpenTelemetry standards);
Observability core concepts: logs, metrics, traces, golden signals, log analysis, dashboard creation, and alerting configuration;
Hands-on experience with CI/CD tools (Bitbucket, Git, Jenkins, UCD, Ansible) and automated testing frameworks;
Container & Cloud technologies: Docker & Kubernetes; APIs and system integration (REST API fundamentals);
Basic understanding of security controls: authentication, RBAC, access management, and audit compliance;
Elasticsearch certification and Microsoft Azure knowledge are a strong plus;
Productivity Tools: Jira, Confluence, ServiceNow, MS Office.

Profile & Other Requirements

Professional English C1 (spoken and written) — mandatory; French and/or Dutch is a plus;
Strong collaboration & coaching skills — comfortable mentoring peers and interacting with technical and non-technical stakeholders;
Proactive mindset with strong ownership, structured problem-solving, and continuous learning attitude;
Experience in regulated environments (e.g., Financial Services) is a strong plus;
Willingness and availability for on-call support and scheduled overtime activities when required;
Must own a valid work permit or EU/Schengen Space nationality to legally work in Portugal;
Portugal-based, specifically in Lisbon — hybrid working model (CET alignment required).

Legal: Must own a valid work permit or EU/Schengen Space Nationality to legally work in Portugal

We connect IT professionals with projects that match their skills, professional experience, and goals, then we offer a career progression program, delivered by in-house specialists - our People Experience Partners - to guide them through our journey with us.

What we offer:

A project that matches your skills and ambitions, as well as your preferences for working policies and culture.
A competitive salary with awesome benefits and opportunities to leverage your knowledge and network to earn additional income.
An empowering and respectful work culture enriched with social and learning events.
A People Experience Partner specially assigned to you - your go-to career guide, responsible for supporting your growth, facilitating training, and ensuring your work-life balance at KWAN.

At KWAN, they make sure that I feel comfortable with the client I’m working for and that what I’m doing aligns with my career aspirations.

Luis Caldeira, DevOps @ KWAN

At KWAN, I’m given the space to be myself and do what I love. I have control over the projects I work on, as well as the direction of my career.

Pedro Fonseca, Front End Developer @ KWAN

I see my People Experience Partner as someone who is always available to provide me with motivation and constant feedback, which helps me be sure that I am in the right place.

Josimar dos Reis, Software Developer @ KWAN

I know that I’ve contributed to the growth of a company that truly values a “people first culture”, because my ideas, experiences, and individuality were always appreciated.

João Nascimento, Software Developer (KWAN Alumni)

My two years at KWAN were an incredible experience! From the start, I was welcomed into a warm and collaborative environment where I felt truly supported.

Laís Ortiz, Software Developer @ (KWAN Alumni)

Grab this opportunity, apply now!