--- title: 'Staff Software Engineer, Observability at Robinhood' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-observability-robinhood-menlo-park-x4cpe56e560w' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-11' --- # Staff Software Engineer, Observability at Robinhood - **Company:** Robinhood - **Location:** Menlo Park, CA - **Compensation:** $180k–$270k - **Posted:** 2026-07-30 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11 - **Apply:** https://boards.greenhouse.io/robinhood/jobs/7489707?t=gh_src=&gh_jid=7489707 ## Job description Join us in building the future of finance. Our mission is to democratize finance for all. [An estimated $124 trillion of assets](https://www.cerulli.com/press-releases/cerulli-anticipates-124-trillion-in-wealth-will-transfer-through-2048) will be inherited by younger generations in the next two decades. The largest transfer of wealth in human history. If you’re ready to be at the epicenter of this historic cultural and financial shift, keep reading. ## About the team + role We are building an elite team, applying frontier technologies to the world's biggest financial problems. We're looking for bold thinkers. Sharp problem-solvers. Builders who are wired to make an impact. Robinhood isn't a place for complacency, it's where ambitious people do the best work of their careers. We're a high-performing, fast-moving team with ethics at the center of everything we do. Expectations are high, and so are the rewards. The Observability team's mission is to build and own Robinhood's full-stack observability platform — the foundation that keeps every product, service, and customer experience running reliably at scale. We design and operate the systems that give engineers deep visibility into how Robinhood's infrastructure behaves, ensuring that when something goes wrong, the right people know immediately and can act fast. Our work spans metrics, logs, distributed tracing, and alerting pipelines, and we partner closely with the Robinhood Command Center to ensure our observability systems meet or exceed 99.9% uptime. We believe in monitoring our own monitors — the observability infrastructure is a product, not just a tool. As a Staff Software Engineer on the Observability team, you will be the technical lead shaping the roadmap for how Robinhood observes itself at scale. You will own the observability control plane end-to-end, making architectural decisions that directly impact the reliability and operational health of Robinhood's entire product surface. You'll lead a team of six engineers, drive the strategy for cost-efficient telemetry ingestion, build in-house solutions where off-the-shelf tooling falls short, and integrate AI-driven approaches to accelerate progress toward full-stack observability. This is a high-ownership, high-visibility role where your technical decisions set the direction for the entire organization! This role is based in our Menlo Park, CA office, with in-person attendance expected at least 3 days per week. At Robinhood, we believe in the power of in-person work to accelerate progress, spark innovation, and strengthen community. Our office experience is intentional, energizing, and designed to fully support high-performing teams. ## What you'll do - Define and execute the full-stack observability roadmap, establishing a clear technical vision for metrics, logs, traces, and alerting infrastructure across Robinhood's engineering organization. - Own and evolve the observability control plane, including telemetry ingestion pipelines, cost management strategies, and the tooling that ensures observability components remain highly available. - Lead and collaborate with a team of six engineers to build scalable, self-service observability solutions that enable product and infrastructure teams to move faster with greater confidence. - Establish and maintain SLOs for observability systems that meet or exceed Robinhood's 99.9% uptime target, ensuring the observability platform is as reliable as the services it monitors. - Partner with the Robinhood Command Center and engineering teams across the organization to align on dependency mapping, incident response workflows, and observability standards. ## What you bring - 8+ years of software engineering experience, with a proven track record of owning and delivering large-scale observability or infrastructure platform initiatives. - Deep expertise in Kubernetes and public cloud environments (AWS preferred), with the ability to architect and operate distributed systems at scale regardless of specific vendor tooling. - Strong coding proficiency in one or more languages (Go, Python, or similar) with experience integrating observability agents, libraries, and instrumentation directly into production codebases. - Demonstrated experience owning an observability control plane or telemetry pipeline — including ingestion cost management, cardinality control, and signal routing — in a high-traffic production environment. - Experience with the Vector data pipeline (or equivalent high-throughput log/metrics routing tools) and familiarity with tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Honeycomb, Humio, or Sentry is a plus. ## What we offer - Challenging, high-impact work to grow your career - Performance driven compensation with multipliers for outsized impact, bonus programs, equity ownership, and 401(k) matching - Top Tier benefits to fuel your work, including 100% paid health insurance for employees with 90% coverage for dependents - Access to the best AI tools on the market and continuous AI skill-building for every employee, technical or not - Lifestyle wallet - a highly flexible benefits spending account for wellness, learning, and more - Employer-paid life & disability insurance, fertility benefits, and mental health benefits - Time off to recharge including company holidays, paid time off, sick time, parental leave, and more! - Exceptional office experience with catered meals, events, and comfortable workspaces. In addition to the base pay range listed below, this role is also eligible for bonus opportunities + equity + benefits. Base pay for the successful applicant will depend on a variety of job-related factors, which may include education, training, experience, location, business needs, or market demands. The expected base pay range for this role is based on the location where the work will be performed and is aligned to one of 3 compensation zones. For other locations not listed, compensation can be discussed with your recruiter during the interview process. Base Pay Range: Zone 1 (Menlo Park, CA; New York, NY; Bellevue, WA; Washington, DC) $230,000—$270,000 USD Zone 2 (Denver, CO; Westlake, TX; Chicago, IL) $203,000—$238,000 USD Zone 3 (Lake Mary, FL; Clearwater, FL; Gainesville, FL) $180,000—$211,000 USD Click [here](https://careers.robinhood.com/benefits) to learn more about our Total Rewards, which vary by region and entity. If our mission energizes you and you’re ready to build the future of finance, we look forward to seeing your application. Robinhood provides equal opportunity for all applicants, offers reasonable accommodations upon request, and complies with applicable equal employment and privacy laws. Inclusion is built into how we hire and work—welcoming different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences so everyone can do their best. Please review the [Privacy Policy](https://careers.robinhood.com/applicantprivacypolicy) for your country of application. ## About Robinhood ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Robinhood is a commission-free investing platform that democratizes retail finance by eliminating trading fees and lowering barriers to entry for stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrency. - **Entity Type**: Public (ticker: HOOD) – listed on NASDAQ - **Headquarters**: Menlo Park, California, United States - **Founded**: 2013 - **Founders**: Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Fintech / Online Brokerage / Financial Services - **Target customers**: B2C – retail investors, from first-time investors to experienced traders; also serves active traders via Robinhood Legend - **Mission statement**: “Democratize finance for all.” ## Products & Services - **Robinhood App (Mobile & Web)**: Commission-free trading of stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, DOGE, SHIB, etc.). Start with as little as $1. - **Robinhood Gold**: Premium subscription ($5/month) offering features like larger instant deposits, professional research, and zero management fees on every dollar over $100K for managed portfolios. - **Robinhood Legend**: A desktop trading platform for active traders with advanced tools and real-time data. - **Cash Management / Sweep**: Uninvested cash swept to FDIC-insured program banks (up to $2.25M in coverage). - **Crypto Trading**: Robinhood Crypto allows buying, selling, and transferring multiple cryptocurrencies. - **Robinhood Credit Card**: (Not detailed in search results but widely known; not required here.) ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not directly stated in results; earlier reports show $10.6B valuation (likely historical). As a public company, market cap fluctuates – check latest. - **Key Metric**: Record annual revenue of **$2.95B** for FY2024; **35M+ funded customers**; **over 23 million funded accounts**. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly listed in the provided snippets, but Robinhood is a publicly traded company with institutional investors. - **Growth Signals**: - Record revenue growth driven by net interest income, Gold subscription growth (exceeding 2.6M subscribers), and transaction-based revenue recovery in options and crypto. - Continued expansion into crypto, active trading tools, and gold subscription services. - Headcount: ~2,700 employees (as per researchorg.com). ## Competitive Advantages - **First-mover in commission-free trading**: Disrupted the brokerage industry by eliminating per-trade commissions. - **Mobile-first, user-friendly interface**: Lowers the barrier for new investors. - **Integrated ecosystem**: Stocks, options, crypto, cash management, and a premium tier all in one app. - **Strong brand and community**: Viral customer acquisition and high retention. - **Scale and network effects**: 35M+ funded customers create a large, engaged user base. - **Regulatory compliance**: Registered with SEC, FINRA, SIPC (up to $500k securities protection), SOC 2 Type II certified, and FDIC sweep coverage. ## Strategic Focus - **Deepening the financial services stack**: Expanding beyond trading into cash management, credit, and premium subscriptions. - **AI and automation**: Embracing AI across the product and operations (the company expects AI fluency from all employees). - **Active trading and professional tools**: Growing the Legend platform to capture higher-volume traders. - **International expansion** (not explicit in results but likely a priority). - **Maintaining a “high performance culture”** while scaling carefully with a lean, elite team. ## Why Work Here - **Culture highlights**: Robinhood describes itself as a **high-performance environment** with a “special forces” mentality – fast-moving, high-impact, and results-driven. Values include “First Principles Thinking,” “Insane Customer Focus,” “Lean & Disciplined,” and “One Robinhood.” Egos are checked; the best solution wins. - **Remote/hybrid/office**: The search results do not specify current policy. Historically, Robinhood has been office-first with some flexibility. Check the careers page for the most up-to-date policy. - **Notable perks and engineering culture**: - Cutting-edge technical challenges (scale, security, real-time trading). - AI fluency is a baseline expectation – the company invests in AI tools (e.g., BrightHire for note-taking) and expects candidates to be AI-savvy. - 24/7 support and protection guarantee for customers. - Interview process includes real-world problem-solving, system design, and case studies – no AI tools allowed during live interviews. - Background checks and fingerprinting for certain roles. - **For job seekers**: Robinhood is not for everyone – the pace is demanding and goals are ambitious. But for those who thrive in high-performance, elite teams, it offers rapid impact and ownership. ## Sources 1. [careers.robinhood.com](https://careers.robinhood.com/) 2. [robinhood.com/us/en/about-us/](https://robinhood.com/us/en/about-us/) 3. [robinhood.com/us/en/](https://robinhood.com/us/en/) 4. [researchorg.com/company/robinhood](https://www.researchorg.com/company/robinhood) 5. [robinhood.com/us/en/careers/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-interviewing-at-robinhood/](https://robinhood.com/us/en/careers/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-interviewing-at-robinhood/) ## Other roles at Robinhood - [Engineering Manager, International](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-international-robinhood-toronto-c4qxq11wg2et) — Toronto, Canada - [Engineering Manager, International](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-international-robinhood-new-york-cqc7tetftsfj) — New York, NY - [Senior Software Engineer, Tokenization](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-tokenization-robinhood-toronto-b1wkmngt2k22) — Toronto, Canada - [Senior Software Engineer, Tokenization](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-tokenization-robinhood-menlo-park-ffy5qhb1betb) — Menlo Park, CA / New York, NY - [Software Engineer, Tokenization](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-tokenization-robinhood-toronto-g345hcjjw4b6) — Toronto, Canada - [Software Engineer, Tokenization](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-tokenization-robinhood-menlo-park-xagrj5ck35sa) — Menlo Park, CA / New York, NY - [Staff Data Scientist (Quantitative Researcher)](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-data-scientist-quantitative-researcher-robinhood-new-york-yap4bc1sp8ce) — New York, NY - [Cashiering Support Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/cashiering-support-associate-robinhood-clearwater-gazs23m2s9kz) — Clearwater, FL - [Web Developer](https://feeny.ai/job/web-developer-robinhood-toronto-c39t92rzg8pq) — Toronto, Canada - [AML Investigator](https://feeny.ai/job/aml-investigator-robinhood-denver-sywk42h1bnrq) — Denver, CO / New York, NY / Westlake, TX