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Technology Engineering Associate Director, Observability and Event Management

AbbVie · North Chicago, IL · Full time · Information Technology

Posted Aug 7, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 2026

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Likely interview questions for this role

Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.

About your past

Tell me about an incident where better observability would have changed the outcome.

What they are checking: Whether they draw on a real incident where missing visibility cost time, showing they understand observability from experience rather than from vendor slides.

This is described as the technical authority for observability and event management at North Chicago. What would you want to know about your mandate before accepting?

What they are checking: Whether they check that the authority described is backed by budget, sponsorship and decision rights, since a title alone rarely changes how teams behave.

What would you do

The posting names OpenTelemetry and distributed tracing. How do you get teams to instrument their services properly?

What they are checking: Adoption, which is the hard part of any observability program.

You would position observability as an enterprise service with service definitions and adoption expectations. How do you set an adoption expectation that teams will actually meet?

What they are checking: Whether they can set adoption expectations teams see value in meeting, rather than mandates people quietly ignore, which is how enterprise services usually stall.

You would drive automation-first alerting, remediation and event routing. What should never be automated?

What they are checking: Whether they know where automated remediation is risky, such as data changes or cascading restarts, and keep humans in the loop for those decisions.

You partner with architects and cloud engineering to embed coverage in new systems. How do you get observability designed in rather than added later?

What they are checking: Working upstream, which is what the associate director level buys.

About the work

This role owns observability across logs, metrics, traces, events and digital experience monitoring. Which of those is most often neglected, and what does that cost?

What they are checking: Depth across the full observability surface rather than a logging background.

You would lead event detection, correlation, enrichment and noise reduction. Walk me through reducing alert noise without losing a real signal.

What they are checking: Whether they can cut alert noise through correlation, deduplication and thresholds tied to user impact, without suppressing the signals that point to real outages.

The posting mentions artificial intelligence for IT operations to improve signal-to-noise and speed root cause identification. Where does that genuinely help, and where is it oversold?

What they are checking: A considered position on a term that gets used loosely.

How do you build telemetry pipelines that do not cost more than the problems they surface?

What they are checking: Cost awareness, which sinks many observability programs at enterprise scale.

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The full job description

As published by AbbVie.

The Associate Director will serve as the technical authority for Observability and Event Management. Lead the technology strategy, engineering, and operational excellence of the enterprise’s monitoring, telemetry, and event lifecycle capabilities. This role ensures our platforms, applications, and infrastructure are measurable, predictable, and resilient – enabling proactive detection, automated remediation, and data-driven engineering decisions. Responsibilities: • Own the observability strategy across logs, metrics, traces, events, and digital experience monitoring. • Position observability as an enterprise service with clear service definitions, support models, standards, and adoption expectations. • Influence the architecture and lead the engineering portion of modern telemetry pipelines: OpenTelemetry, distribution tracing, log aggregation, and metrics platforms. • Lead the technology portion for Event Management, including event detection, correlation, enrichment, noise reduction, and automated response. • Support and implement AIOps capabilities to improve signal-to-noise ratio, reduce toil, and accelerate root-cause identification. • Drive automation-first approaches for alerting, remediation, and event routing. • Partner with architects, platform, and cloud engineering teams, to ensure observability and monitoring coverage are embedded into new and existing services, applications, infrastructure, and platforms. • Lead tool selection, roadmap, and vendor management for observability and event platforms. • Lead and develop a team responsible for enterprise observability services, including coaching, performance management, prioritization of team capacity, skills development, and alignment of team execution to enterprise technology priorities. • Mentor engineers and influence engineering culture towards proactive reliability and data-driven operations. • Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or Business Administration with 9 years’ experience OR Master’s Degree with 8 years’ experience OR PhD with 4 years’ experience • Deep expertise in observability/monitoring platforms: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, or SolarWinds • Strong understanding of OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, and telemetry standards • Hands-on experience with event correlation, AIOps and automation frameworks • Demonstrated proficiency of ITIL Event Management, Incident Management and Operations Control • Proven ability to translate telemetry into insights for engineering and leadership • Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to bridge the gap between technical and business audiences • Capacity to make well-informed and timely decisions in a fast-paced environment • Thorough understanding of customer needs and the ability to translate them into roadmap product/service offerings • Demonstrated ability to manage competing priorities and needs from various stakeholders Applicable only to applicants applying to a position in any location with pay disclosure requirements under state or local law: ​ • The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Company believes in good faith it will pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location, and we may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future. ​ • We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick), medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.​ • This job is eligible to participate in our long-term incentive programs. Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, incentive, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole and absolute discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent with applicable law.​ AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community.  Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled. US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/equal-employment-opportunity-employer.html US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more: https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/reasonable-accommodations.html

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