IT Monitoring & Observability Engineer - Jackson, MI 49201

IT Monitoring & Observability EngineerLocation: Jackson, MI 49201Mode: Contract (6+ Months) – OnsitePosition Summary: We are seeking an IT Monitoring / Full-Stack Observability Engineer to design, implement, and operate enterprise monitoring solutions across on-premises infrastructure and Microsoft Azure cloud environments. This role will be responsible for delivering end-to-end observability—covering infrastructure, applications, services, logs, metrics, traces, and alerting—with a primary focus on SolarWinds (self-hosted) for on-prem monitoring and Azure Monitor for cloud monitoring. The ideal candidate has strong technical depth in monitoring architecture, alert strategy, dashboarding, and operational response, and can partner with infrastructure, application, and security teams to ensure high availability and performance.Key ResponsibilitiesMonitoring / Observability Platform OwnershipOwn and enhance enterprise monitoring using: SolarWinds (Self-Hosted) for on-prem infrastructure monitoring (network, server, storage, virtualization). Azure Monitor for Azure cloud monitoring (metrics, logs, alerts, workbooks).Define and maintain standards for instrumentation, telemetry collection, alerting, and dashboards across hybrid environments.Administer and optimize SolarWinds platform components (e.g., Orion modules where applicable). Configure monitoring for: Network devices (SNMP/WMI/ICMP), routers/switches/firewalls Windows/Linux servers VMware/Hyper-V and storage platforms (as applicable)Build actionable alerts with escalation policies, suppressions, dependencies, and maintenance windows.Troubleshoot polling, credentialing, discovery, and performance issues for SolarWinds services and SQL back-end (as needed).Azure Monitoring (Azure Monitor / Log Analytics / Application Insights) Implement Azure-native monitoring strategy using: Azure Monitor Metrics + Alerts Log Analytics Workspaces Application Insights (where applicable) Workbooks for visualization and reportingCreate and maintain KQL queries for logs/insights and operational analytics. Establish alert rules for Azure resources (VMs, AKS, App Services, Functions, SQL, Storage, networking, etc.).Drive adoption of observability best practices: Golden signals (latency, traffic, errors, saturation) SLOs/SLIs (where applicable) Noise reduction and alert fatigue prevention.Ensure dashboards tell an operational story (health, performance, capacity, and trends). Support incident response by correlating signals across on-prem + cloud.Automation, Integration & ITSM Automate monitoring configuration and reporting through scripting (PowerShell, Python) and IaC (Terraform/Bicep as appropriate).Integrate monitoring alerts with ITSM tools (e.g., ServiceNow/Jira/Remedy) and collaboration channels (Teams/Email).Support continuous improvement through post-incident reviews and monitoring enhancements.Documentation & GovernanceMaintain runbooks, SOPs, monitoring standards, and service maps. Ensure monitoring adheres to security and compliance requirements (access controls, logging retention, least privilege).Required Qualifications8+ years experience in IT monitoring / observability / infrastructure operations in enterprise environments. Hands-on experience with SolarWinds (Self-Hosted) administration and monitoring configuration. Hands-on experience with Azure Monitor including Log Analytics, alerts, and workbooks. Strong working knowledge of:Windows Server and Linux fundamentals Networking concepts (TCP/IP, DNS, routing, SNMP, firewalls) Monitoring protocols and methods (SNMP, WMI, agents, APIs, syslog)Experience building dashboards, defining alert thresholds, tuning signals, and reducing noise. Proficiency with KQL (Kusto Query Language) for Log Analytics queries. Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis skills across hybrid systems. Ability to work in on-call/after-hours rotations (as applicable).Preferred / Nice-to-Have SkillsSolarWinds module experience (as applicable): NPM, SAM, NCM, VMAN, NetFlow, etc. Azure services monitoring experience: AKS, App Service, Functions, SQL MI/DB, Key Vault, Storage, Front Door, Azure Firewall, etc.

Experience with:Application performance monitoring (APM) concepts (distributed tracing, dependency mapping) OpenTelemetry instrumentation (helpful but not required)Familiarity with CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Bicep, ARM). Knowledge of ITIL processes (Incident/Problem/Change). Scripting: PowerShell, Python, REST APIs. Security monitoring collaboration (e.g., SIEM integrations, audit logging, RBAC reviews).