Observe is a SaaS observability platform that enables Engineering and DevOps teams to troubleshoot modern distributed applications 10x faster. We consolidate machine-generated data from applications and transform it into human-understandable insights. The runtime team is part of our broader backend organization, owning Observe's core data transformation pipelines and user query execution paths. Our systems process over 2PB of data daily and execute more than 200M queries.
What we are buildingThe Observe platform relies heavily on Snowflake as our storage and execution engine. Our team is exploring ways to optimize our existing deployment while also investigating alternative platforms and execution models, including:
Alternative generic databases such as ClickHouse or DuckDB
Application-specific databases such as InfluxDB or TimescaleDB
Streaming systems like Apache Spark or Apache Flink
We seek a PhD candidate in database systems who wants to create real-world impact. The ideal candidate will quickly integrate into our daily operations to gain deep system knowledge, then independently pursue areas of mutual interest to enhance our platform. As a startup with approximately 75 engineers, every contribution matters, and we're deeply invested in your project's success.
Requirements:
Currently pursuing a PhD in database systems or related field
Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, and evaluating database system features
Strong academic performance and research background
Practical software engineering experience, ideally through industry internships or open-source contributions
Internship Details: We accept applications for 12+ week internships, with strong preference for candidates available for up to 6 months. This is a full-time, in-office position based in either San Mateo, CA or Zurich, Switzerland.
What we are offeringWorking together with a world class team of software engineers holding thousands of citations and dozens of patents
Competitive pay for interns both in the US and in Switzerland
Close mentorship and real-world impact beyond academic considerations
Top Skills
What We Do
Observe was founded by Sutter Hill Ventures in November 2017. Our founding team came from leading Enterprise SaaS and software companies that work with vast quantities of data such as Snowflake, Splunk and Wavefront.
Our founding thesis was that the enterprises are data rich, but information poor. Data is siloed making it difficult to understand what’s going on inside applications and infrastructure. The result is often a poor customer experience and wasted engineering time tracking down incidents. Oh, and it costs a fortune.
Observe discerns why applications and infrastructure are running the way they are from the data they emit. We enable engineers to spend more time coding features and less time investigating incidents. We reduce outages and issues with customer experience. And we leverage an elastic cloud architecture so that you only pay for what you use.
