Lead Observability & Platform Engineer

ABOUT US We’re the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services, headquartered in Belgium. We are the way the world moves value – across borders, through cities and overseas. No other organisation can address the scale, precision, pace and trust that this demands, and we’re proud to support the global economy. We’re unique too. We were established to find a better way for the global financial community to move value – a reliable, safe and secure approach that the community can trust, completely. We’re always striving to be better and are constantly evolving in an ever-changing landscape, without undermining that trust. Five decades on, our vibrant community reflects the complexity and diversity of the financial ecosystem. We innovate diligently, test exhaustively, then implement fast. In a connected and exciting era, our mission has never been more relevant. Swift now has a presence in 200 countries and legal territories to serve a community of more than 12,000 banks and financial institutions. In line with testing standards/procedures, under guidance of management, and within operating plan and allocated budget, to lead, plan and participate in qualification and acceptance testing activities of high complexity related to hardware and software components of SWIFT networks ensuring product quality. To act as a technical lead on qualification projects. We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Lead Engineer to drive the evolution of our Observability Platform, focusing on ELK stack products. In this pivotal role, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and continuously improving our observability and monitoring capabilities, ensuring systems remain scalable and meet global standards. You will co-lead the vision and strategy for CI/CD processes across development, release, and deployment lifecycles, taking ownership of building and optimizing automated CI/CD pipelines and release orchestration. Your expertise will enable the delivery of high-quality, reliable software at speed while maintaining performance. Key Responsibilities Co-lead the ELK platform Architect, deploy, and scale Elasticsearch clusters (hot-warm-cold tiers, ILM, snapshot/restore). Design ingestion with Logstash/Beats/Elastic Agent; standardize parsing (grok processors), mappings, and templates. Implement APM/tracing (e.g., OpenTelemetry) and align logs/metrics/traces for end-to-end visibility. Build dashboards (Kibana) and analyst-friendly views; automate alerting and anomaly detection. Govern access (RBAC), encryption, masking; manage capacity & cost efficiency (index strategies, routing). Co-lead DevOps & Release Orchestration Own CI/CD pipelines end-to-end (build, test, package, scan, deploy, rollback). Create pipelines for infra and content (Ansible for infra; version dashboards, index templates, alert rules). Implement automated release/deployment orchestration Leadership & Collaboration Mentor engineers; lead technical design reviews and roadmap planning. Collaborate with Security/Compliance for security, auditability and data governance. Advocate observability standards across engineering (structured logging, trace context propagation). What will make you successful? Experience: 12 years in software development including data/platform/DevOps engineering; 3 with ELK at scale (hot-warm-cold, ILM, index templates). Education: University degree in Computer Science, software engineer or equivalent. Technical Skills: Data & Streaming – Deep knowledge of ingesting, processing, and managing large-scale data using big data platforms or messaging/streaming tools with key technologies of Elastic Search, Logstash, Kibana, Kafka; Equivalent technologies such as Solr/AWS OpenSearch/Algolia, Apache NiFi/Fluentd/Beats, RabbitMQ/AWS Kinesis/Apache Pulsar. Observability & Monitoring – Deep knowledge of Elasticsearch internals (shards/replicas, ILM, index patterns, snapshots, query tuning); experience with APM, traces, metrics, logs, alerting strategies, and on-call operations. Or equivalent knowledge of distributed data platform internals, including data partitioning, replication, index or structure management. Programming & Databases - Proficiency in Java or Python with solid OOP fundamentals; experience with relational (Oracle, MySQL) and NoSQL databases. Experience in Relational Database (e.g. Oracle, MySQL) or NoSQL Databases. DevOps & CI/CD - Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation tools (Jenkins/Cloudbees, OpenShift, Ansible, Docker); familiarity with DevOps principles and supporting product delivery for monitoring and messaging platforms. Architecture & Integration: Experience with SOA technologies, microservices, REST/SOAP APIs; proficiency in both Linux and Windows environments. Experience working within an Agile-driven environment Professional Skills: Experience in Agile-driven environments; ability to collaborate with distributed teams across time zones. Strong interpersonal skills and customer-centric mindset; able to build strong partnerships with internal stakeholders and delivery organizations. Familiarity with ITIL or structured operational processes (Incident Management, Problem Management, Continual Improvement) for maintaining and improving service delivery. Following Experience will give candidates an added advantage: Experience in mentoring or leading engineering teams. Exposure to cloud observability or analytics platforms (Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent). Experience in API benchmarking with tools such as JMeter, Postman. Knowledge of Swift products and messaging services (Alliance Access, SwiftNet...). Knowledge of Atlassian products (Jira/Confluence/…). Knowledge of ServiceNow. What we offer We give you the freedom to be yourself. We are creating an environment of unique individuals – like you – with different perspectives on the financial industry and the world. A diverse and inclusive environment in which everyone’s voice counts and where you can reach your full potential. We are committed to an inclusive and accessible recruitment process. If you require a reasonable accommodation related to accessibility during your application or interview, please contact accessibility-Sysgroup@swift.com or indicate this in your application. Please note that this mailbox is not monitored for general recruitment enquiries and should only be used for accessibility or accommodation-related requests (for example related to vision, hearing or neurodiversity). All requests are confidential and will not affect your candidacy. Don’t meet every single requirement? At Swift, we are dedicated to building a workplace where people can bring their full selves and ideas to the team, so if you are excited about this role, we encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every single qualification. Swift doesn’t stand still. We are constantly evolving and tirelessly innovating. Working at the intersection of finance and technology is a very exciting place to be right now. Swift is transforming cross-border payments, making them faster and more transparent than ever before. We are the way the world moves value — every instant of every day, in almost every country. We are proud that what we do has a critical impact on the global financial community and touches almost every aspect of the financial world. So, what you do at Swift has real impact too — an impact that matters every day. Which is why you matter to us. Joining Swift gives you unparalleled exposure to knowledge, expertise and technologies. If you have what it takes, you’ll be able to take on different career paths and have the opportunity to work in teams, departments and disciplines in countries around the world. Swift is unique. There is no other organisation like ours in the world driving the long-term future of the financial ecosystem. You’ll be surrounded by bright, customer-focused and intellectually curious people in a collaborative, friendly, open and inclusive environment. At Swift we are trusted every instant. Everything we do has an impact that matters. And as a member of our team, you are trusted to make your impact every day. 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