Oct 2024 – Present · 1 yr 7 mos

• Head of Engineering for Splunk AppDynamics — Driving the evolution of AppDynamics as an enterprise-grade observability solution tightly integrated with Splunk’s broader platform. Delivered major improvements in enterprise readiness, advancing security, compliance, and scale for global customers. Championed AI innovations including LLM observability and AI-powered health rules and BTs, enabling intelligent anomaly detection and automated insights. Spearheaded integrations including LO Connect and Splunk Observability Cloud, unifying AppDynamics with Splunk to provide hybrid observability workflows and accelerate portfolio adoption.

May 2022 – Oct 2024 · 2 yrs 5 mos

• Head of Engineering for Splunk Observability Platform — Led Splunk’s contributions to OpenTelemetry and drove innovation across Splunk Observability Cloud. Delivered advanced metric pipeline management and usage visibility, giving customers granular control over ingestion, cardinality, and cost optimization while providing transparency into metric-time series usage across teams. Launched native Service Level Objectives (SLOs), enabling customers to define, monitor, and manage error budgets and reliability targets directly in the platform. Simplified onboarding by enabling service discovery and zero-configuration instrumentation through OpenTelemetry, allowing automatic detection of services and telemetry capture without manual setup. Expanded Splunk Observability Cloud into new regions across EMEA and APAC, while strengthening compliance posture, including progress toward FedRAMP, to ensure enterprise-grade security, performance, and data residency.

Sep 2019 – May 2022 · 2 yrs 8 mos

• Head of Engineering for Observability Getting Data In (GDI) and SRE teams — Led Splunk’s contributions to OpenTelemetry while building the foundation for the industry’s first OpenTelemetry-native observability platform. Delivered the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry, eliminating reliance on proprietary agents and accelerating customer adoption. Scaled Splunk Observability Cloud to handle more than four trillion data points and 100 million traces, enabling streaming dashboards and alerts with sub-two-second latency. Optimized cloud and SRE operations by automating deployments and improving efficiency, achieving a 20% reduction in COGS while strengthening platform reliability.

May 2018 – Sep 2019 · 1 yr 4 mos · Redwood City, CA

• Founding Member and Head of Product — Led product strategy, market fit analysis, and user experience for a venture-backed observability startup. Drove product-market fit validation, vision, and execution by engaging directly with customers and aligning the roadmap to enterprise observability needs. Defined and executed the product vision not only for Omnition but also for the broader OpenCensus community, helping shape the evolution that ultimately became OpenTelemetry. Architected the industry’s first linearly scalable, full-fidelity distributed tracing solution without sampling, establishing a new benchmark for performance and accuracy in observability.

Apr 2013 – May 2018 · 5 yrs 1 mo · Greater Boston

• Head of Engineering for Log Analytics — Drove innovation in SaaS-based observability by delivering scalable products, consolidating data collection, and improving customer experience. Incubated a new product and team to create Log Intelligence, VMware’s SaaS-based log analytics solution. Propelled a data collection consolidation initiative that simplified workflows and enhanced the customer experience. Led the strategic direction and functional architecture for the Log Insight product, ensuring scalability and enterprise readiness.

Apr 2011 – Mar 2013 · 1 yr 11 mos · Greater Boston

Aug 2010 – Apr 2011 · 8 mos · Greater Boston

Dec 2008 – Aug 2010 · 1 yr 8 mos · Greater Boston

Jan 2010 – Present · 16 yrs 4 mos

• Sharing insights on observability, OpenTelemetry, and engineering leadership through writing, public speaking, and community contributions, with a focus on making complex topics approachable and actionable for both practitioners and leaders. Author of Mastering OpenTelemetry and Observability, a practical guide blending real-world use cases, open-source innovation, and enterprise readiness. Blogger at SFlanders.net, publishing on observability practices, AI in developer productivity, and lessons learned in engineering leadership. Frequent speaker at international conferences including KubeCon and Splunk .conf, delivering sessions that balance technical depth with actionable strategies for practitioners and decision-makers. Active community builder and contributor to the CNCF OpenTelemetry project, helping advance open standards and grow the ecosystem.

Jun 2007 – Dec 2008 · 1 yr 6 mos

Jun 2005 – Jun 2007 · 2 yrs