Senior Software Engineer II - LLM Observability

About this role

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

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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…