Dynatrace Expert / Observability CoE Lead
Location: Basildon, UK (Fully Onsite)
Daily Rate: £350 – £360 per day (Maximum)
Contract Duration: Initial contract until July 2027
Start Date: Immediate
Agency: Norton Blake
About the Role
Norton Blake is partnering with a leading global technology consultancy to recruit a contract Dynatrace Expert. This position is for a major, long-term initiative establishing a unified, EMEA-wide Observability Centre of Excellence (CoE) for a world-renowned consultancy.
This unique contract role blends strategic leadership with hands-on technical execution. You will act as a core member of the newly formed CoE—defining enterprise governance, standards and operating models—while simultaneously working directly with domain teams to drive instrumentation, onboarding and maturity uplift.
If you are a Dynatrace specialist looking for a project that offers exceptional scale, impact and long-term contract security, this delivery-focused role is ideal.
Key Responsibilities
CoE Strategy & Governance
- Lead the enterprise observability strategy across critical banking applications, API platforms and business-critical workflows.
- Define and establish CoE standards, including instrumentation guidelines, naming conventions, tagging/metadata standards and alert design principles.
- Engage with individual application teams to assess current observability maturity (logs, metrics, traces, events) and create structured improvement roadmaps aligned to business priorities.
- Drive standardisation and governance across complex multi-team and multi-environment landscapes.
Hands-on Engineering & Implementation
- Design and implement end-to-end observability for critical payment workflows.
- Trace distributed transactions across microservices, MQ, mainframes and APIs using PurePath.
- Configure request attributes to enrich traces with vital business context (e.g. Transaction IDs, payment types).
- Define SLIs, SLOs and error budgets, integrating them into release and incident decisions.
- Design noise-reducing alerting strategies leveraging baselines, anomaly detection and Davis AI.
- Build audience-specific dashboards for everyone from engineering teams up to executive stakeholders using DQL.
Experience & Qualifications Required
- 6+ years of dedicated experience in Observability and Performance Engineering.
- Subject Matter Expert in Dynatrace (Dynatrace Associate Certification or higher is strongly preferred).
- Deep understanding of tracing distributed transactions across complex environments (Microservices, MQ, Mainframes, APIs).
- Experience with external tool integrations, specifically combining Dynatrace with Splunk and Moogsoft for a unified enterprise platform view.
- Familiarity with AppDynamics is advantageous.
- Strong stakeholder communication and consulting skills, with the ability to coach and support application teams through maturity uplifts.
Why Apply?
This is a high-visibility project driving enhanced resiliency and productivity for a global leader in the financial sector. With a stable contract running until July 2027, it offers rare long-term security in the contract market and the chance to shape a large-scale enterprise platform from the ground up.
Note on Work Mode: This position is fully onsite at the client's Basildon campus. Please only apply if you are able to commute to and work from the Basildon office full-time.
To Apply
Please submit your CV directly to Norton Blake for immediate review and consideration.